No Libraries???

[thisonegirl]

So, my Mom was on a buisness forum, where someone felt strongly about having no libraries with the technology we have today. My Mom told me about it, and we both(and my Mom's career is in technology)totally disagreed.

I mean, a library is a great place to study,(right before the school year ended, my friends and I were doing a project at the library) and for me, it's much easier to find books in a library or browse. Not to mention, not everyone can afford to buy such expensive technology.

I'm not trying to be all er...anti-tech, because my Mom has an e-Reader, and it is REALLY cool, but getting rid of libraries? Oh, come on. With books, you can place sticky notes so much easier, and get to a certain book easier.

So, what's your opinion?

 

[marypops!]

I think libraries should stay. Sure newer technology is making it easier to gain access to a wider range of things. You can find books at the click of a button, then transfer it to an eBook, which can store thousands of books. They are much more convenient, and save on travel space. However, many eBooks are expensive and some nations don't have access to this for development reasons, possibly political reasons (countries like China or North Korea might not want their citizens to have access to such knowledge all the time) and just personal reasons. Most people prefer the feel of reading a book than reading from a screen. Anyway, all technology has a life cycle. When technology becomes cheaper, it gets more popular until new technology is available and the amount of people using it decreases. You could say books are starting to be phased out by this leapfrogged technology because some are much cheaper than they used to be, leaving many to buy them and enjoy them, but I think books are one of those things that just won't be replaced because people are used to them. If eBooks do become much more popular than normal books, libraries can just adapt by offering books on eBook form that you can't get from Amazon or wherever else you get eBooks. I believe some libraries are already doing this? I know i've also read that a library somewhere has a new device that prints the book you want to read so it's never out of stock if you want to read or buy it.

Short version. Although eBooks are convenient, save on travel space, and give wider access to the books you want, people will always prefer to read an actual book out of habit, they have a better feel then an eBook, and are easier on the eyes than a computer screen. Therefore, libraries shouldn't be taken away just because of new technology.

 

[::Snow_White::]

Considering I plan on majoring in library science and want my career to surround around books this would be a very bad idea. I would probably cry if they got rid of libraries, but as much as I say I think technology is taking it over, I don't think people would let that happen. I still think libraries will be here, but they certainly won't be as popular. I love real books, pages, everything about it. I think it's easier to search e-books but I think that it takes away from oldtime atmosphere libraries give me. I think that is what makes it fun. It's nice, quiet, and inspiring.

 

[Babyjustrun]

Libraries are a great thing.

That being said, I prefer to not use mine for school projects, but that will obviously change. I tend to not sticky note important things as I read them, so I'm forever trying to find what I'm looking for. Online, I can just ctrl+f. That, and my teachers are much more strict about in-text citations from books, rather than with online sources. It's faster for me.
But obviously, online sources aren't as credible, and I can't just use online sources later in life.

I find municipal libraries more helpful for the topics I end up writing about. I could probably find wonderful sources there, whereas at my school library they have encyclopedias and books that are only realy useful for a grade 10 social studies project. I like libraries for leisure reading tbh. Saves me money

 

[Sparx]

I think that the only people who really think that technology has taken the place of libraries are people who do not use libraries. There is SO much information online, but it is only a fraction of the information that is constantly being written in books and periodicals.

I think libraries and technology go hand in hand. At my universities library (which I can access from home) I can access numerous "sister" libraries that will loan me texts. Today's technology has opened up so many libraries that were previously unreachable in certain parts of the world to the mass public.

I was annotating a collection of journal articles last semester and I had more than 400 sparately titled journals on my subject avalible at my home computer, via the gateway. All of these journals had at least 5 years of material avalible (I was only allowed to go 5 years back in researching) and if you add up that each of these journals produced 12 issues a year with 10 articles in them, I had 240,000 articles avalible at my computer desk, on the one subject I was writing on. Thats not counting the other hundreds and millions of subjects out there. This information is NOT avalible online. It simply isn't. This information is exclusively in the academic community and cannot be accessed except via a library or subscription to the journal (and I'm certainly not subscribing to all 400!!)

Libraries will never ever, ever be unnecessary. They may be unnecessary to certain people, but others will always be using them either through online gateways (like I do) or physically pulling the books from the stacks.

 

[WestCOT]

Someday physical libraries may be obsolete, it's true.