<p>College libraries are at an interesting spot. Before the internet having the largest library was very important; as research and documents including books are presented on line does the size of a library approachthat of a cell phone? Most libraries now have extensive computer access. What do you think the college library of the future will look like?</p>
<p>They will still have paper books. I prefer a hard copy to reading off a screen. Perhaps larger, more computers.</p>
<p>There will always be a market for antiquities.</p>
<p>I think reading a book is coming more into fashion again, especially with the younger crowd - thanks to Harry Potter!</p>
<p>For years I have looked forward to the elimination of browsable stacks... yet they are still there! It takes up so much space to have books on shelves, especially now when the aisles between shelves must be wide enough to accomodate a wheel chair, and the shelves cannot be so high as to need a step. With a little technology all of the books could be stored in a much more efficient wharehouse, and pulled out on an as-needed basis. All this of course assumes a need and a demand for the actual paper book.</p>
<p>I think as people get more used to reading off of a screen and as the amount of information available on line increases the cost of adding stacks (or files of graduate papers) vs. providing study or classroom space the tide will turn and we will start to see more documents stored off campus</p>
<p>available in hard copy upon request, but the bulk of research documents will be available on line and it won't just be your colleges research papers but the papers from graduate students and researchers around the world.</p>
<p>As this occurs the difference between having a library with 8 million books vs. a library with 1 million diminish. I enjoy holding a book (how about that Harry Potter) but I have crossed the line and read more news on line than in printed newspapers. If someone build a leather bound dual screen product that displays the same size print of a book, an electronic bookmark and dictionary, that weighs the same as a book I might be interested. Imagine how many volumes our local public library will hold.</p>
<p>Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device, trade-name
"BOOK."</p>
<p>BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology; no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere, even sitting in an armchair by the fire, yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disc.</p>
<p>Here is how it works: BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of recyclable paper, each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. The pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder, which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence.</p>
<p>Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufacturers to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs. Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of your finger takes you to the next sheet. BOOK may be taken up at any time and used merely by simply opening it.</p>
<p>BOOK never crashes or requires rebooting. The Browse feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an Index feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval. An optional "BOOKMARK" accessory allows you to open BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session, even if the BOOK is closed.</p>
<p>BOOKMARKS fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKMARK can be used in BOOKS by various manufacturers. Conversely, numerous BOOKMARKS can be used in a single BOOK if the user wants to store numerous views at once. The number is limited only by the number of pages in the BOOK.</p>
<p>You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with an optional programming tool, named: "Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus" -- or -- "PENCILS."</p>
<p>Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK is being hailed as the precursor of a huge entertainment wave. BOOK'S appeal seems so certain that thousands of content-creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportedly flocking to the new phenomenon. Look for a flood of new titles soon.</p>
<p>I think that books are considered to be more reputable than most things online and until e-materials lose such stigma, books will be around. Not only that, I think that with intellectual property rights and all that, authors will continue to prefer the printed word. There's also those who prefer to read things in paper (I will buy SparkNotes even though they're available for free online just because I can't stand reading things on the screen for long periods of time).</p>
<p>I certainly hope not. There's just something about the feel of a book in your hands. And the smell of libraries and book stores.</p>
<p>There's a huge difference between doing online research and actually going into library stacks. Anyone who's done research by going into bookstacks knows the power of serendipity. It's fine to do a library search online using keywords, but once in the stacks, you invariably look to the right and to the left, above and below the book you expected to check out, and somehow, you leaf through a few of these books and find something unexpected. Sometimes, it takes you on different tangents from the direction you started on. It's a little bit like buying a magazine because of a specific article and ending up reading other articles that have no relation whatsoever to the original topic but are nonetheless interesting. Sometimes, a totally unexpected piece of information is uncovered, like the time I was looking for information about some pirate and.... discovered a funeral eulogy for my great grandfather (no, he was not a pirate, but an upstanding pillar of the community :)) You lose this serendipitous aspect of library research if you do things online or merely request specific titles from the library staff. This is especially true if the material you seek is in a depository library as is more and more the case.</p>
<p>Nowadays, there are movable bookshelves that leave no space between them unless activated. When I was a student, there were carrels between shelves where we could sit and read. These are gone, as are index card files. </p>
<p>Now let me look again at the space in my house and see where I can fit another set of shelves.</p>
<p>No (in answer to the OP's subject line question).</p>
<p>I can't speak to the question about college libraries, but our public library is thriving. We just opened a new library in September and in the last 10 months have issued over 1,700 new library cards. And we have less then 10,000 people in our home library area. It is sad though to see all the people that come in to use our computers (we have a t-1 line) and mostly kids checking out books.</p>
<p>I check out books from my local library on an almost-weekly basis, and some of my favorite places are bookstores. I spend more time than I should online, and it's wonderfully convenient, but for extensive reading there's just no comparison. So to answer your question... I certainly hope not!</p>
<p>Though I agree with Marite that serendipity is quite important in your research I still think that most of what we do will go online. I see a great amount of serendipity in internet use through the use of search engines and links. I find things that I never would have found in the library, even with an expert librarians assistance.</p>
<p>Further, I would expect that over time there will be more contextual searches and more visual links. For those of you who have checked out the mapping of schools on PR you know what I mean for the visual linking. Further, getting everything online is what the scholar.google.com effort is all about. The non-profit publishers see the Google scholar project as enough of a threat to sue Google for copyright violation. (Though I would argue fair-use for educational purposes in Google's defense.)</p>
<p>As I go on college tours I keep hearing how many "volumes" the school library has and how you can get almost any book you want through an interlibrary system. Perhaps I am an optimist but I think the internet can deliver most of what a regular library can right now. So the importance of the size of the library at a particular school is diminished for me. It could be an interesting question to ask the students to see how their perspective may differ from us parents.</p>
<p>Libraries will become obsolete, offices will be paperless, and electricity will be too cheap to meter.</p>
<p>Possibly after the google-scholar project is completed, but not before.<br>
I don't know what one means by a regular library. My standard is the Harvard library system, where you can find the Trotsky archives, a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, French Revolutionary pamphlets, the complete Meiji Collection, gazetteers from Ming China and on and on.
I sit in front of a computer for much of the time. But I still feel the need to actually go into library stacks for real research. Even if I find something on the internet, I like to check it against a printed source.
There are lots of students who seem to believe that if something is posted by a source with .edu at the end, it is reliable. Librarians and profs constantly need to remind students not to trust everything they read on the internet. Not that what's written in black and white is always reliable and trustworthy, but stuff posted on the internet has a way of being truncated and/or badly sourced, if at all. I hope that no one confuses Wikipedia with the Encyclopedia Britannica.</p>
<p>I think the Internet revolution has actually helped libraries. More people are using the Internet than ever before, and free access that is provided at the library is the only way many people can use the net. If the question is, will the book section be reduced at libraries, the answer is definetly yes.</p>
<p>All,</p>
<p>An article today from slashdot may resurrect this thread for further discussion. According to CBS News:</p>
<p>
[quote]
books are a thing of the past at a University of Texas library this fall. The University will be converting the library to a 'social gathering place more akin to a coffeehouse
[/quote]
</p>
<p>For the slashdot discussion on this topic see:</p>
<p>Libraries as a physical location will remain important for certain kinds of materials for a very long time -- especially "old" books and physical objects. More generally, books are still things to go to the library for.</p>
<p>But anybody who has been actively using college libraries in recent years knows about the fast and far-reaching increases in electronic journals, documents, and databases. I teach and do research at a university and haven't gone to the library for any English-language journal or document for the last 10 years! Almost everything I want can be found on-line. The story is different in foreign languages but that's changing, too.</p>
<p>Edit: I should add that it's college libraries that generally organize and manage the subscriptions to electronic journals and databases that students and faculty use. "Librarians" are information specialists, not just cataloguers and bibliographers.</p>
<p>Libraries will always have a purpose as storage for volumes of documents but the cost of providing stack space on campus vs. student study space will put the storage of hard copy underground or in distant warehouses. This is great because students at small schools will have even greater opportunities to read from a wider range of research that used to be available at the Universities with the largest libraries. It is sad because as a student I used to spend time walking through the stacks and picking up and reading interesting looking books, feeling the old leather binding, noticing the typeface and margin sizes. My favorite find were the books with old sketched maps and descriptions of plants or natural formations. Some books were original drafts and were done in some distant students hand perhaps for a doctoral thesis or research project. I look forward to the electronic book with leather sides and two (pages)screen, so it would read like an open book and feel like an open book...always remembering what page you left off on.</p>
<p>I wonder if magazines could sell site licences so all the students could access their News and World Report or other subscription journals with ease.</p>