Empty Shelves Or Empty Heads?
September 8, 2009
On the cutting edge of what a Star Trek vision of the future holds for libraries, Cushing Academy has made the decision to forego all it’s physical library books in favour of an entirely digital collection. That’s more than 20, 000 books going bye-bye to be replaced with 18 electronic readers such as the Amazon “Kindle” and several large flat -screen TV’s. Somehow this seems a little premature yet as lo-fi books are operationally functional with minimal requirements other than literacy on the part of the patron. Anything utilizing technology requires a substantial support system to undergird it or the whole structure comes tumbling down. The IT guys & gals are going to be holding up the whole world if they’re not doing so already. I expect this will have an interesting learing curve and I’ll be surprised if it’s a painless transition. The question is, are they boldly going where no one has gone before or fools rushing in where angels fear to tread?http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/gallery/090409_cushing_library/
[...] October 15, 2009 Will we all be reading on Kindles or their like in the future? (In a previous post we referenced a prep school which was completely exchanging it’s print collection for an all digital version. http://deepthought2009.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/empty-shelves-or-empty-heads/ ) [...]
Good point and one I haven’t heard addressed as yet.
In many cases, going electronic makes a lot of sense, but this extreme is going to eat our lunch. We are going to lose a lot of contextual knowledge if we toss out all physical documents. Books and handwritten documents contain much more than words, and it’s really too bad some librarians have a narrow view of their value.
Several years ago I wrote a thesis on hybridized cultural institutions describing the commonalities of libraries and museums. In many instances, documents and books serve not only as carriers of words but can even serve as physical artifacts of culture.
Much historical/cultural information may be gleaned from noting the grade of paper, the binding, the lettering, the print method and even the publisher. In many cases, documents may contain precious handwritten notes so that it is possible to reconstruct the thinking processes of whoever wrote them.
Do we so discredit the content of our own times as a worthless study for future generations? And if that is truly the case, (as some might well say) might that inferior quality not be the natural result of having steadily replaced critical thinking, historical fact-digging and a love of truth with our generation’s love of self-interested politics and economics with an emphasis on speed and instant gratification?
We are set with the greatest knowledge ever amassed in history with the most ephemeral methods of preservation. This has, I’m convinced, contributed further to the fact that so many otherwise intelligent people have proven themselves very smart but sorely lacking in understanding about how the pieces of knowledge they possess interrelate.