Internet is not a substitute for libraries
Sunday, 28 October 2007
AIM Jakaria Rahman and Momena Khatun
The library has, since long, been considered to be the source and reservoir of knowledge. In higher education and research, library has specific functions to facilitate the extensive use of learning resources by students, teachers and researchers. With the growth of literature in large numbers even in the same field, these groups of library users have faced problems in identifying the appropriate literature for their use and consultation in a desired timeframe.
Information and communications technology (ICT), particularly during the last two decades, has significantly contributed to open the door of accessing hidden knowledge in a highly efficient manner. Initially, the ICT was used in the library environment for developing databases of information resources mainly aiming at storing and retrieving information on various types of publication resources and also to organize various types of information services. The ICT has put us in the electronic environment to help identify, assess, acquire, record, store, organize and disseminate information and information resources according to specific requirements of an organisation or an individual.
The use of ICT in libraries has enhanced efficiency in all aspects of information acquisition, storage and transfer. Its magical opportunities have dramatically changed the operations of the library and its information services. With the new facilities, the traditional libraries have been modernised to make these as well-equipped and inter-connected electronic resource centres.
In the library and publication fields, computer-based communications have extensively facilitated the transmission of messages, transfer and exchange of files and text, such as online submission of papers for publications in books and journals, uploading/downloading, access to databases, conduct of interactions, provision of bulletin boards and newsletters, journals, and publications, online orders, creation of user profiles, consolidation and repackaging of information for specific needs, dissemination of information, and so on. Through Internet uncountable numbers of monographic materials, journals, learning resources, documents, reports, data, databases, and audio-visual materials generated and published by government and non-governmental organisations and commercial agencies/publishers are now available in electronic formats to access even from the remote corner of a country, thereby increasing the use of these materials and enhancing the efficiency of information dissemination.
Important higher-education officials may ask , "Don't you know the Internet has made libraries obsolete? ". Then we have to try to figure out the actual reasons behind his/her wrong opinion. Many predict that the digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the centuries-old era of libraries. But if this happens, the loss will be irreplaceable. As libraries' relevance comes into question, they face an existential crisis at a time they are perhaps needed the most. Despite their perceived obsoleteness in the digital age both libraries -- and librarians -- are irreplaceable for many reasons:
Internet is like a vast non-cataloged library. Whether you are using Google, Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek, or any one of a dozen other search or Meta search engines, you are not searching the entire Web. Sites often promise to search everything but they cannot deliver. Moreover, what they do search is not updated daily, weekly, or even monthly, regardless of what's advertised. If a librarian told you, "Here are 05 articles on Grameen Bank's Micro credit system. We have 30 others but we're not going to let you see them, not now, not yet, not until you've tried another search in another library," you'd throw up a fit. The Internet does this routinely and no one seems to mind.
Everything is not available on the internet. The amazing amount of useful information on the web has, for some, engendered the false assumption everything can be found online. It's simply not true. With over one billion web pages you couldn't tell it by looking. Nevertheless, very few substantive materials are on the Internet for free. For example, only about 08% of all journals are on the web, and an even smaller fraction of books are there. Both are costly! If you want the articles from IEEE Journals, JSTOR, Emerald or Spinger Journals, you'll need to pay and to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Libraries' collections employ a well-formulated system of citation. Books and journals found in libraries are published under rigorous guidelines of citation and accuracy and are thereby allowed into libraries' collections. These standards are simply not imposed on websites. They can show up in search results whether or not they provide citation. With enough research, the accuracy of web resources often can be determined. But it's very time consuming. Libraries make research much more efficient.
The web is a woefully poor substitute for a full-service library. It is mad idolatry to make it more than a tool. Libraries are icons of our cultural intellect, totems to the totality of knowledge. If we make them obsolete, we've signed the death warrant to our collective national conscience, not to mention sentencing what's left of our culture to the waste bin of history. No one knows better than librarians just how much it costs to run a library. We're always looking for ways to trim expenses while not contracting service. The internet is marvelous, but to claim, as some now do, that it's making libraries obsolete is as silly as saying shoes have made feet unnecessary.
Quality control doesn't exist in the internet. Imagine a library containing 25 billion documents but with no centralized organization and no librarians. In addition, anyone may add a document at any time without telling anyone. You may feel sure that one of the documents contained in the collection has a piece of information that is vitally important to you, and, being impatient like most of us, you'd like to find it in a matter of seconds. How would you go about doing it?
Yes, we need the Internet, but in addition to all the scientific, medical, and historical information (when accurate), there is also a cesspool of waste. There is no quality control on the Web, and there isn't likely to be any. Unlike libraries where vanity press publications are rarely, if ever, collected, vanity is often what drives the Internet. Any fool can put up anything on the Web, and, to my accounting, all have.
Digital libraries are not the internet. A fundamental understanding of what the internet is -- and what it isn't -- can help more clearly define what a library is, and why libraries are still extremely important. The Internet is a mass of largely unpublished materials produced by organisations, businesses, individuals, experimental projects, entrepreneurial webmasters, etc. "Online Collections", however, are different. They are typically provided by libraries and include materials that have been published via rigorous editorial processes. Works selected for inclusion in a library catalogue undergo vetting from qualified staff. Types of materials include books, journals, documents, newspapers, magazines and reports which are digitized, stored and indexed through a limited-access database.
Not everyone has access to the internet. In less developed nations, library access is often the only clear-cut way for an individual to conduct serious research. There are at least two major reasons that the Internet may not provide even an illusory alternative to libraries. Firstly, online access may be much more difficult to attain than library access. A library may have but one computer console, while other Internet access points may charge someone who simply doesn't have the means to pay. Secondly, even if internet access is obtained, the lack of technological education in poorer areas of the world will render the technology much less useful than it would be for the person who has more experience navigating the web.
Old books are valuable. The idea of a library becoming a "book museum" in the age of digitization is sometimes tossed about as an apocalyptic figure of speech. It's a real scare for librarians. The term insinuates that, rather than become contemporary and useful, libraries could turn into historical fetishes like vinyl records or typewriters. And instead of continuing on as research professionals, librarians would be forced to become like museum curators - or, more likely, they would just lose their jobs. But if the evolution of libraries grows to become an interactive meeting place for cultural events and the exchange of ideas, the preservation and exhibition of archival literary relics could be yet another facet to their importance (and, yes, intrigue). Indeed, old books are not only monetarily valuable, but they are part of cultural, historical memory that mustn't be lost to digitisation.
The writers are library professionals and may be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]
The library has, since long, been considered to be the source and reservoir of knowledge. In higher education and research, library has specific functions to facilitate the extensive use of learning resources by students, teachers and researchers. With the growth of literature in large numbers even in the same field, these groups of library users have faced problems in identifying the appropriate literature for their use and consultation in a desired timeframe.
Information and communications technology (ICT), particularly during the last two decades, has significantly contributed to open the door of accessing hidden knowledge in a highly efficient manner. Initially, the ICT was used in the library environment for developing databases of information resources mainly aiming at storing and retrieving information on various types of publication resources and also to organize various types of information services. The ICT has put us in the electronic environment to help identify, assess, acquire, record, store, organize and disseminate information and information resources according to specific requirements of an organisation or an individual.
The use of ICT in libraries has enhanced efficiency in all aspects of information acquisition, storage and transfer. Its magical opportunities have dramatically changed the operations of the library and its information services. With the new facilities, the traditional libraries have been modernised to make these as well-equipped and inter-connected electronic resource centres.
In the library and publication fields, computer-based communications have extensively facilitated the transmission of messages, transfer and exchange of files and text, such as online submission of papers for publications in books and journals, uploading/downloading, access to databases, conduct of interactions, provision of bulletin boards and newsletters, journals, and publications, online orders, creation of user profiles, consolidation and repackaging of information for specific needs, dissemination of information, and so on. Through Internet uncountable numbers of monographic materials, journals, learning resources, documents, reports, data, databases, and audio-visual materials generated and published by government and non-governmental organisations and commercial agencies/publishers are now available in electronic formats to access even from the remote corner of a country, thereby increasing the use of these materials and enhancing the efficiency of information dissemination.
Important higher-education officials may ask , "Don't you know the Internet has made libraries obsolete? ". Then we have to try to figure out the actual reasons behind his/her wrong opinion. Many predict that the digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the centuries-old era of libraries. But if this happens, the loss will be irreplaceable. As libraries' relevance comes into question, they face an existential crisis at a time they are perhaps needed the most. Despite their perceived obsoleteness in the digital age both libraries -- and librarians -- are irreplaceable for many reasons:
Internet is like a vast non-cataloged library. Whether you are using Google, Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek, or any one of a dozen other search or Meta search engines, you are not searching the entire Web. Sites often promise to search everything but they cannot deliver. Moreover, what they do search is not updated daily, weekly, or even monthly, regardless of what's advertised. If a librarian told you, "Here are 05 articles on Grameen Bank's Micro credit system. We have 30 others but we're not going to let you see them, not now, not yet, not until you've tried another search in another library," you'd throw up a fit. The Internet does this routinely and no one seems to mind.
Everything is not available on the internet. The amazing amount of useful information on the web has, for some, engendered the false assumption everything can be found online. It's simply not true. With over one billion web pages you couldn't tell it by looking. Nevertheless, very few substantive materials are on the Internet for free. For example, only about 08% of all journals are on the web, and an even smaller fraction of books are there. Both are costly! If you want the articles from IEEE Journals, JSTOR, Emerald or Spinger Journals, you'll need to pay and to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Libraries' collections employ a well-formulated system of citation. Books and journals found in libraries are published under rigorous guidelines of citation and accuracy and are thereby allowed into libraries' collections. These standards are simply not imposed on websites. They can show up in search results whether or not they provide citation. With enough research, the accuracy of web resources often can be determined. But it's very time consuming. Libraries make research much more efficient.
The web is a woefully poor substitute for a full-service library. It is mad idolatry to make it more than a tool. Libraries are icons of our cultural intellect, totems to the totality of knowledge. If we make them obsolete, we've signed the death warrant to our collective national conscience, not to mention sentencing what's left of our culture to the waste bin of history. No one knows better than librarians just how much it costs to run a library. We're always looking for ways to trim expenses while not contracting service. The internet is marvelous, but to claim, as some now do, that it's making libraries obsolete is as silly as saying shoes have made feet unnecessary.
Quality control doesn't exist in the internet. Imagine a library containing 25 billion documents but with no centralized organization and no librarians. In addition, anyone may add a document at any time without telling anyone. You may feel sure that one of the documents contained in the collection has a piece of information that is vitally important to you, and, being impatient like most of us, you'd like to find it in a matter of seconds. How would you go about doing it?
Yes, we need the Internet, but in addition to all the scientific, medical, and historical information (when accurate), there is also a cesspool of waste. There is no quality control on the Web, and there isn't likely to be any. Unlike libraries where vanity press publications are rarely, if ever, collected, vanity is often what drives the Internet. Any fool can put up anything on the Web, and, to my accounting, all have.
Digital libraries are not the internet. A fundamental understanding of what the internet is -- and what it isn't -- can help more clearly define what a library is, and why libraries are still extremely important. The Internet is a mass of largely unpublished materials produced by organisations, businesses, individuals, experimental projects, entrepreneurial webmasters, etc. "Online Collections", however, are different. They are typically provided by libraries and include materials that have been published via rigorous editorial processes. Works selected for inclusion in a library catalogue undergo vetting from qualified staff. Types of materials include books, journals, documents, newspapers, magazines and reports which are digitized, stored and indexed through a limited-access database.
Not everyone has access to the internet. In less developed nations, library access is often the only clear-cut way for an individual to conduct serious research. There are at least two major reasons that the Internet may not provide even an illusory alternative to libraries. Firstly, online access may be much more difficult to attain than library access. A library may have but one computer console, while other Internet access points may charge someone who simply doesn't have the means to pay. Secondly, even if internet access is obtained, the lack of technological education in poorer areas of the world will render the technology much less useful than it would be for the person who has more experience navigating the web.
Old books are valuable. The idea of a library becoming a "book museum" in the age of digitization is sometimes tossed about as an apocalyptic figure of speech. It's a real scare for librarians. The term insinuates that, rather than become contemporary and useful, libraries could turn into historical fetishes like vinyl records or typewriters. And instead of continuing on as research professionals, librarians would be forced to become like museum curators - or, more likely, they would just lose their jobs. But if the evolution of libraries grows to become an interactive meeting place for cultural events and the exchange of ideas, the preservation and exhibition of archival literary relics could be yet another facet to their importance (and, yes, intrigue). Indeed, old books are not only monetarily valuable, but they are part of cultural, historical memory that mustn't be lost to digitisation.
The writers are library professionals and may be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]