Replacing The Library
I work, and once graduated from, the University of New Hampshire, where the Dimond Library played a rather important role in my life. While a student, I had a work study job in the library for awhile, as an assistant to a couple of research librarians (one, then the other). It was there that I was first introduced to making simple web pages, and the use of a digital scanner to put images on the web. Man, that web thing was cool, and I even got to have my own space at pubpages.unh.edu.
This was in 1996. Even then it seemed clear where all this digital stuff was going. The musty old books I still had to truck from one building to another never smelled mustier as I imagined what this web thing was going to do to libraries. Now, more than a decade later, there is pretty clear evidence that the traditional library is slowly being replaced by the internet.
Now that I work at Computing and Information Services (hmmm… even the latter half of our department name is moving in on the library’s territory), I can see more evidence of this shift. One of our initiatives this year is the establishment of the “Dimond Academic Commons” complete with an IT Support Center. The motto for the “DAC” was voted on and turned out to be “Integrating Learning and Technology”. Of course, the word technology is defined as “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes”, so this motto could just as easily be “Integrating Learning and Doing” or even “Learn To Do Something, Jack”… but I didn’t get to vote. Probably a good thing.
So little by little, silicon will replace wood pulp over at Dimond Library and every other library in the world. Sure, there will be books for years to come, but those interested in preserving a legacy in writing these days will do so in the digital domain. Books can burn, rot, and can’t be copied very easily. They are “bound” (I kill me) to be obsolete sooner or later.
Still, I plan to keep the “Book Learnin’” section here in the Garden of Blog alive and well, even if, in my later years, the word “book” becomes an arcane symbol for the act of reading.
on August 3rd, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Okay, I feel compelled to comment since none of your other librarian friends did. Heh. Two points: the concept of a library is indeed changing due to the emergence of new (kickass) technologies, but even without books, per se, the library will still exist as a repository of knowledge, no matter how that knowledge exists/is stored/is accessed. Secondly, the book is now an art form, and as such its impact on knowledge and learning will become even less quantifiable and more ephemeral, forcing libraries to actually build new repositories in which to house and protect them. These two points, so succinctly put by yours truly, are actually a very large field of research within the library and information science community. If you are really interested I could (use my research librarian skillz to) point you to some articles in the literature.
So there. Bzzzzrt!