Laval Hunsucker wrote:
>
> There have always been dumb users and clever users
Even if all users were very clever, physical collections housed in
buildings are sorely suboptimal for most of their information needs.
For the largest part of history, physical collections were the only
choice, but no longer. And they have never served the vast crowds that
are now using the web first and second for any question they have.
This experience of course creates their world view, their expectations
and their behavior.
The need to use physical collections, for most users, has already
become very small and infrequent, if ever they feel that need. However,
the net and Google in particular, are good at pointing users to the
popular media, the sought-after stuff, the oft-requested information.
Not all quests fall into that category, and researchers more often than
not are after the elusive, the rare, the hidden, the forgotten and
overlooked materials. That's where the net is not *so* good at,
although with searches for specific keywords or names you
can still hit a lot of gold these days and find sources you'd
never have found in the olden days when libraries monopolized
access to recorded information; and the techniques are improving,
digitized matter is expanding at an accelerating pace.
But most importantly, I think, people can get more work done using
the net and will become less interested in physical access since it
takes so much more time, and time is the non-expandable resource.
While still quite a few people could benefit from libraries more
than they do, they have to be pragmatic: their time budget will keep
them from trips to the physical collections and from acquiring the
peculiar skills to make good use of them. Ever fewer will not
be able to do without them - it can't be helped. The disadvantages
of physical collections are just too numerous and too severe.
B.Eversberg
Received on Fri May 28 2010 - 10:37:33 EDT