Sat 14 May 2005
The New York Times has an article entitled, “College Libraries Set Aside Books in a Digital Age,” that describes how books are being displaced by computers in college libraries. I’m sure this trend will be a central part of the design debate for the Stetson addition.
Some quotes from the article:
“In this information-seeking America, I can’t think of anyone who would elect to build a books-only library,” said Fred Heath, vice provost of the University of Texas Libraries in Austin.
Students at Texas, interviewed as they studied or lounged at the library tables, said that they would welcome extra computer space and that they got most of their books anyway at the far larger Perry-Castaņeda Library. But some said they liked the popular selection at the undergraduate library and feared the loss of a familiar and congenial space. “Well, this is a library - it’s supposed to have books in it,” said Jessica Zaharias, a senior in business management. “You can’t really replace books. There’s plenty of libraries where they have study rooms. This is a nice place for students to come to. It’s central in campus.”
“The library is not so much a space where books are held as where ideas are shared,” said Geneva Henry, executive director of the digital library initiative at Rice University in Houston, where anyone can access and augment course materials in a program called Connexions. “It’s having a conversation rather than homing in on the book.”
Carole Wedge, president of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, an architecture firm in Boston that has redesigned dozens of college libraries for the computer age, said most were built “as boxes to house print collections.” The challenge, Ms. Wedge said, is to adapt them to what she called “the Barnes & Noble culture, making reading and learning a blurred experience.”
“This is a new generation, born with a chip,” said Frances Maloy, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and leader of access services at Emory. “A student sends an e-mail at 2 a.m. and wonders by 8 a.m. why the professor hasn’t responded.”
While my family is pretty “digital” — between the three of us, we own 3 PDAs, 3 laptops, and 2 desktops — we also own 3,000+ books. There’s something pleasantly visceral about flipping through the pages of a book that you just don’t get reading an e-Book. I’d hate to think of buying fewer books just because digital books are also available. (Of course, I’m reading for pleasure, not researching.)
So to get back to the Stetson issue, how should the college split the space? 80% books/20% computers? 50/50?
May 14th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
I haven’t learned to read from a screen comfortably for an extended period of time or effectively or efficiently for any period of time. If this phenomenon is true for many others, how can computers be substituted for books in most cases.
May 14th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
If most students have computers anyway, it would be a shame to devote 50% of the library to computers. Libraries need computers so that people can look up books in the card catalog, but why make another whole building full of computers when we already have Jesup?
May 14th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
Electronic ink?
May 14th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
ebooks are tremendous, especially if you can search through the text electronically. If you need a hard copy, just print out the pages you need on library printers…then nobody cares if you mark up those pages. I read most of the “classic” (out of copyright) books I need for classes this way. As for reading on the screen: this is mostly a problem with CRT monitors. It causes far less eye strain to read on LCD monitors, which are becoming very popular.
May 14th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
Most of the research literature for computer science is in the form of papers from either conferences or journals, and I usually just find them online and then print them out to read. I, like Frank, find it really inconvenient to read from a screen for long periods of time. If there’s an actual book I need, I’ll usually buy it. Most of the books I use are texts, manuals, or references, and I like to have them on my desk when I’m working. I guess that if there were a section of the library for just tech books, that would be acceptable, but the typical library doesn’t have them all in a conveniently accessible place, if at all.
So, my use for the actual books in a library is fairly limited. I don’t think I’m very representative of how most people would use a library, though, and I can’t see reading books from a screen being very pleasant at all.
So, as for devoting half a library to computers, I don’t really see it happening. I think it’s not necessary, as I think that most people have laptops, and that they’d rather go and sit at an open table or wherever they please than sit in a room full of computers. It’s much nicer to study with your laptop in an environment where there are lots of books around than to study in a room full of computers. Maybe the school should put more effort into providing laptops and free-form study space (like Sawyer or Schow) than into providing actual rooms full of desktops.
May 14th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
Upon further reflection, it strikes me that this is a really complicated issue. Due to search and hyperlinks, nothing beats electronic media when trying to find a fact. (By the way, I highly recommend Yahoo!’s Desktop Search to anyone trying to find something on their PC.)
However, some of my most interesting reads I’ve found by stumbling across them in the stacks or in bookstores. (I remember coming across Lord Chesterfield’s “Letters to His Son” — also highly recommended — in the attic of Stetson while looking for a biography of Lord Palmerston. I never would have searched for such a book.)
I think I’ve convinced myself that there needs to be some kind of mix — in outdoor terms, a quiet, peaceful meadow for using a laptop that’s very close to a forest of books that you can wander — and wonder — through.
May 14th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
To go on a slight tangent, ok maybe not so slight…
Most of Williams’ students do have computers, yet they are not technically “required materials” a la books in a class and thus, financial aid does not cover the cost of purchasing a computer. In other words: you have to have the money for a computer to have the benefit of the laptop outside of class and such wonders. I know I loved the opportunity to bring my computer to the library when I really needed to crank out research and wanted to mix search for books, articles, and starting to type. And I love the idea of fixing Stetson’s “ratio” by finding a more novel approach (potential, though I’m sure there are drawbacks) by making it a laptop-friendly (they have rentable laptops, but that’s not quite the same experience) book-based library. This also allows professors and student groups and everyone who can find a use for it to integrate technology even more at Williams, a nice benefit. Though it does mean that OIT would need a lot more help and people would be asked to become more tech-savvy (and considering how many people have been unable to show me a movie in Griffin, maybe that’s impossible)
I don’t love the idea that not every student has it so nice because my family was able to afford my nice new laptop before my first year. That said, I know laptops are cheaper now, but doesn’t that just make it easier for Williams to fix that imbalance?