Libraries in 21st Century

Dear Laura Every place has a primary function and then some secondary functions. You defend libraries with their second functions. Library is a place supposedly everyone can access, read books, let everybody reads the same books, so it is cheaper to read a book in Library than to buy the book. So Library was a place to create productivity, efficiency. But today they are waste of money like to set up brick and mortar schools of any kind. Today library is another brick and mortar place. Can you imagine how much money you bury in cement, brick and sand. Construction is the most expensive thing in the world.Also only limited number of people can go to that library. My library, ONLINE GOOGLE Library appeals to whole world, provide access to 3 billion books in the world, to 4 billion people of the world. In Turkey we stopped to invest on libraries to bury our money to sand, cement and brick. Thanks to Google to have us reach Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard and more and more libraries in the world. Newbooks will also be put on internet evrybody will access from there. Not from a library. 6 years ago we also started making libraries smaller. Rather than books we stored CDs at much less price and accessable from all campus without going to library at nights.

A library is very expensive investment to get together, to have coffee or enjoy the scinery. There are places at much lower costs. ONLINE promoter of the world Muvaffak GOZAYDIN mgozaydin@hotmail.com+902124380290 +905322919676

muvaffak gozaydin, president at AYDIN Education Technologies, at 6:40 am EST on January 5, 2007

library as place

Given the description of how library as space provides an essential intellectual role, I was surprised by the follwing sentence: “Our challenge increasingly is not the inability to provide sufficient online resources but to make them the resources of choice by our students.”

Why a competition with other on-line sources? Moreover, since the library as place DOES function in unique ways, why not integrate place and the on-line cyberspace?

Both public libraries and university libraries provide resources that are not available on-line; at the same time, these libraries provide on-line access to many people who still do not have computers at home. Finally, libraries (this term includes staff) provide the expertise needed to evaluate the sources, connect sources, and to weigh the evidence found both on line and in that “place.”

Finally, there is an immeasurable “something” that comes from walking through library stacks, seeing books clustered together allowing the visitor to see the relationships and to search on one’s own without the immediate filter provided by whatever search engine. The visitor becomes his/her own search engine...a random one at times. This randomness finds connections search engines miss. I find devotees of on-line only research somewhat like the student who does math on a calculator without first learning how to do math long-hand. How to understand the process when the buttons don’t work anymore?

Theron, at 11:20 am EST on January 5, 2007

social space, work space, cultural space

As society becomes increasingly wired, and more communication takes place in entirely virtual environments, it is important not to cast aside the importance of physical, social spaces. The author makes this point well. However, I would go further and argue that the Library is more than a “knowledge” or data center on campus, it also has the potential to be a “bricks and mortar” cultural center, as well. By reaching out to social and learning communities on campus, librarians can facilitate panel discussions, readings, lectures, and film screenings, while simultaneously demonstrating that source materials for such events are available in the library. Furthermore, it is also possible to extend such events to distance learners via streaming audio/video and the management of related (digitized) learning objects via the library website. Undoubtedly, this requires time, money, effort, and staffing. However, it is also equally important to appreciate the need to reinvigorate the library space.

Rather than fearing the “digital” present and future, librarians should be excited about the opportunities to bring people together, in person, in a collective spirit exhibiting respect for knowledge and understanding.

I appreciated the author’s comment regarding the need for private spaces. I’ve found that many of my reference interactions continue later via phone or repeat visits. Also, distance students sometimes require lengthy phone conversations to ensure comprehension. Factoring the needs of librarians and staff for private space should be an important priority.

Finally, as architect Rem Koolhaas magnificently demonstrated in Seattle (http://www.spl.org/images/slideshow/NewCentralSlideshow.asp), it is possible to create innovative and beautiful libraries that balance the needs of a wide variety of constituents in our digital age.

Ameet Doshi, Librarian at Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington, at 6:20 pm EST on January 5, 2007

I enjoyed reading Laura Rein’s article and the subsequent comments and discussion. This is a topic that is on my mind every day.

Unlike Muvaffak Gozaydin, I don’t have a crystal ball that enables me to predict either the demise or the continuation of libraries. The one thing that I am sure of is that libraries must change in order to avoid becoming irrelevant. And I fervently believe that the education of the world’s citizens would suffer if we did become irrelevant. As the head of the library at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, I am charged with trying to maintain existing services to the students and faculty of the University, and to the citizens of the broader community, as well as with developing a vision for new services and implementing that vision. Because we don’t have unlimited resources, one of the great challenges is trying to determine which of our existing services we need to maintain and which we need to let go of in order to be able to deliver new ones. Whenever we make any change that diminishes or eliminates an existing service, there is always a contingent of people who feel its loss and speak up about it. Yet, the status quo is not an option if we want to continue to be vital members of our respective communities. We face a far greater risk by digging in and trying to hold on to everything we’ve always done than we do by trying to understand the changing needs of our communities and responding to them. But the need for change goes beyond mere response — we have to try to anticipate needs. And, especially if we are in libraries that are part of an academic community, we have an obligation to educate, to broaden awareness and to teach people how to become lifelong, independent learners.

I have a few questions for Muvaffak Gozaydin.

In his vision of a fully digitized world, where do archival and primary source materials fit in? Every library I’ve been affiliated with has rich stores of manuscripts, documents, photographs, sound recordings, official papers and other unique materials that we are charged with preserving and providing access to. More and more of our efforts are devoted to introducing people to this world and teaching them how to select, evaluate, and do research with these materials. Many of them are fragile, come with restrictions on their use, and are not easy (or cheap) to digitize. Do we just ignore these materials and focus exclusively on the vanilla published collections that everyone has and that Google and others are digitizing?

Muvaffak Gozaydin’s confidence in our governmental bodies and our commercial enterprises must be greater than my own. The idea that the U.S. Congress or the United Nations or any government body would preserve and provide open access to vast stores of digitized materials is, I think, overly optimistic. I have witnessed a disturbing trend in the past decade. Far from providing expanded access to digitized information, I have seen government bodies turn over responsibility for providing long-term access to electronic publications to public and academic libraries. Actually, this is often not even a deliberate or conscious process on the part of the government. What happens more often than not is that publications made available on government websites simply disappear from one day to the next, or the content of those documents changes without any indication that it has changed. This need not be due to any nefarious intent but is often a lack of awareness that anyone might need to have access to earlier versions of these documents. If some library has not stepped up to the plate and preserved and provided long-term access to these materials, they are lost forever. And do we really trust any commercial organization (and let’s not pretend that Google and other such services are not interested in turning a profit) with deciding which materials are worth digitizing and preserving? Do we assume that they will always continue to provide access to these materials for “free"?

Do we assume that everything can be digitized? Do we assume that everyone will have access to a computer with enough bandwidth for long enough periods of time to be able to get the information they need? Will that street bum on Market Street have access to a computer? If the answer is yes, his access will most likely be through the San Francisco Public Library.

Thanks to Muvaffak Gozaydin and everyone else for such thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. I look forward to continuing to read this discussion.

Carol HixsonUniversity Librarian, University of Regina

Carol Hixson, University Librarian at University of Regina, at 10:30 am EST on January 7, 2007

Hidden Value

If a mother were no more than a safety device and food delivery system, machines might tend our infants.

If a library were no more than a data delivery system, machines might provide a cheaper and more efficient online equivalent.

I think the library is much more than that. I agree with the opinion that the library has social, psychological value. Or should.

B. J. Pryor, at 5:10 am EST on January 9, 2007

One possible future

The Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Educause Review has an interesting short essay by Lynne Scott Cochrane entitled, If the Academic Library Ceased to Exist, Would We Have to Invent It? Seems an appropriate read for some of the commenters here.

Paul R. Pival, Distance Education Librarian, at 4:50 pm EST on January 18, 2007

Resistance to change

I want to thank Muvaffak Gozaydin for labeling me as being “resistant to change.” I hadn’t checked back in on this discussion since I first posted my comments on January 7 and I laughed out loud on reading that label this morning. May I quote you to my staff, some of whom are uncomfortable with the pace and even the direction of the changes I’m trying to implement?

I don’t believe that recognizing today’s reality means that a person is resistant to change. In order to move people and convince them to change, it’s necessary to acknowledge their fears and concerns and convince them that not changing is riskier than changing. I’m not able to snap my fingers and “make it so” and my only hope is to convince the people around me that change is needed. And it’s not just my staff who have concerns about abandoning or changing traditional services — it’s also a large percentage of our users. Academic libraries in this country (and the U.S.) right now are walking a fine line, trying to develop services that are relevant and useful to the new generation of users, without completely abandoning the others. It’s also a matter of resources. Much as I would like to digitize all of our unique materials and make them freely available on the Web, I don’t have anything close to the necessary resources to do it. If you do, I am very envious.

I don’t see the world in black and white terms. I do have a vision of where I would like my library to be and my main concern is that we won’t be able to get there quickly enough.

Best,

Carol Hixson

Carol Hixson, University Librarian at University of Regina, at 9:16 am EST on January 29, 2007

The library is vitally important to higher education institutions in helping them achieve their mission. In the Information age the libraries has accepted the chanllenges with the cope with Information Communication technology and the librarians are always trying on their best to absorbe with the new technologies with the application of ICT for the Library And Information Services provided by the Library. The role of Library in the human life is a valuable.

Lule Rajesh Bhalchandra, Libraries at Sheth N.K.T,T, College, Thane, at 4:26 am EST on March 9, 2007