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College Libraries Without Books
Groo writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that 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.' This push is done in response to the increasing use of online research as a part of undergraduate studies. According to the article the missing books will be replaced by "colorful overstuffed chairs for lounging, barstools for people watching, and booths for group work. In addition to almost 250 desktop computers, there will be 75 laptops available for checkout, wireless Internet access, computer labs, software suites, a multimedia studio, a computer help desk and repair shop, and a cafe."
I like my books, I like hiding and having fun in the isles, don't take away my fun plllease.
WOW, all I can say is that it's a shame ... there is nothing like books when it comes to learning; it's not easy to highlight, markup and take notes on a public computer or a loaned out laptop.
For shame, UT - a bad start onto a dangerous slippery slope.
Have they guaranteed that every piece of printed matter in the library is available in electronic format, equally easy to access, before doing this?
If not it seems like a move to effectively rob students of necessary learning resources.
Surely people wanting to study in a library are more interested in access to good materials than in a coffeeshop environment which they can get elsewhere easily.
Then again, no doubt the university will make a shed load of money from the coffee, etc.
For tech subjects, there's nothing like Google.
For tech subjects.
Get into the real world, of detailed data though -- suddenly, all the detailed data is in the literature. We must find a way to expose that data to the new mechanisms of search -- searching indices of books in the Dewey Decimal System is over, and it's now a matter of factual extinction vs. getting the data out there.
Guess I'll have to take a trip back to the old alma mater some day to take a look at this thing. Back when I was there, Flawn Academic Center was still called the "Undergraduate Library", though it was already undergoing the early stages of this transition. The UGL (nicknamed the "UGLy") was the least user-friendly of the libraries on campus, and people tended to hang and study in the larger and more cozy PCL. The FAC was then transitioning to more computer labs and such.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
There will be a mega starbucks counter so that everybody will have something to drink.
He, actually since libraries usually have pretty good locations in cities, maybe this should be done to every library. Let me make some phonecalls to arrange it....
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
So, is it going to be replaced with a online library? Are they going to let students rely on Wikipedia for reference? what about all them books that are too old and fragile to be scanned. Seems like a very short sighted decision to me.
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
People talk about "1984" all the time, but I think Ray Bradbury was more on the mark. Every day we get closer to the world described in "Fahrenheit 451".
Unfortunately, if you try to tell people about this, they get all confused due to that recent documentary (which stole the name).
I went to the University of Texas, and their library was always inspiring. Their libraries were huge. I remember checking out a 300 page book on moth's probiscus... I don't think that kind of information is available online, at least not anywhere near as in depth... Atleast to me, this is a huge disappointment...
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
This seems odd to me. After receiving an Honorable Mention from Playboy in their "America's Best Party Schools" list in 2002, one would think they'd try to turn that reputation around. I mean sure, Internet research is all well and good, but nothing will ever replace a long boring Saturday holed up in the library with a stack of books.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Am I the only one bothered by this? Although the internet is very useful for finding information quickly, I wouldn't go to the scale of turning a library into a social setting by removing books and making it internet-oriented; books are essential, and I find it much more comfortable to read a book in a chair rather than onscreen at my computer on a website configured in an awkward way that makes it difficult to read.
Constantly printing material is rather annoying, in my opinion, and I couldn't stand it at my High School. We were doing something similar - a Virtual Library it was called - and there were only two rows of books. Not many people used the library. As internet-oriented as I am, I still went to the Public Library instead of that useless Virtual Library.
Who knows, though. Only time will tell, but I'm getting the feeling it isn't a good thing.
Fun Zoid RPG
This is sick. I'm sorry, but it is. There is *NOTHING* on the web that can compare, in both depth and breadth, to a well stocked research library. Use the internet to get quick, on-point information - a particular stat or an overview of something; you go to a library if you want to spend a lot of time doing some in depth study with materials that far outclass what you are going to find on the web.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
...but sometimes you find that the original source for some material is in a text published thirty (or sixty, or even more) years ago that simply cannot be found online. While you may be able to hit the online journals for current research, there's no substitute for citing the fundamentals, and you can't honestly cite a work without even taking a moment to skim through it first.
So, until a university scans all of its book collection for online perusal, this is a step in the wrong direction.
We should have done this 5 years ago. The sooner we move to digital libraries the better, why? Simple. No one likes physical books anymore, they are heavy, they are difficult to store, theres a limited amount of them, and overall people are less likely to read when they have to use the old system.
I think online libraries are the future, and if we really want to help people we should offer free access to these libraries to anyone in the third world with internet access. This is good news folks.
Now the only way to make this better is to allow anyone from any college anywhere in the world to access one giant online library of combined college networks.
why? my school's (cal poly slo) library has 2 labs with about 100 computers, we have laptops available, and lots of tables, group rooms, and comfy chairs.
we also have 4 stories of books above that.
you're telling me a cal state school has a bigger library than UT?
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
Have they guaranteed that every piece of printed matter in the library is available in electronic format, equally easy to access, before doing this?
The books were just moved to other libraries on campus.
From TFA:
"This summer, 90,000 volumes were transferred to other collections in the campus's massive library system."
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The strange thing is though that at the complaints board for a university library usually has: * Turn the bloody cellphones off ! * People keep talking all the time * Noise from the cafe area is really bad
I think the online library has to be superior to the physical library. Technically it can but it must be superior in order to be a successful replacement.
Now, if it were superior as the technology says it can be, I'd need a place to hang out and do my readings and this is where the coffeeshop atmosphere makes sense. It's this or Starbucks.
The actual press release from UT:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/about/news/fac.html
Even though the undergraduate library apparently had 90,000 volumes there, NO ONE I KNOW used it as an actual-book library. Practically all the useful real books are at the main campus library (Perry-Castaneda), not the UGL. First floor of the UGL had magazines. Second floor had a pretty large and useful computer lab. Third floor had mostly media for checkout (CDs, DVDs, etc.). There were some shelves of books there, but very, VERY rarely did I ever need one of them. The fourth floor was cordoned off and had some art pieces in storage that would go to the Ransom Center elsewhere on campus.
It makes a lot of sense to move those few volumes that were actually at the UGL to the other libraries. This creates a lot more room at the UGL/FAC for study areas, which were pretty lacking.
So, while the blaring headlines make it sound like a big deal, from the point-of-view of a UT student (going on five years now and counting, woo hoo), this isn't that big of a deal.
They may have given the books away to other libraries in the system, but I have a feeling that when they say "software suites", they are including the digitized versions of the books they are eliminating.
Information is not a static thing, and the progress from static books to dynamic online resources is a reaction to that. However, there is still value in understanding what people believed back before the "curent truth" was understood. Spontaneous Generation, a defunct theory of abiogenesis, was once the prevailing theory of germs. Now we know better and have better theories to explain the phenomenon. But does that mean that the thought processes of those early medical pioneers were wrong or only incomplete?
An older book which contains the original theory as it was understood to be correct at the time will present the evidence with a positive bent. Any modern book will only present it with a desultory tone.
Our understanding of the world grows all the time, and books are excellent in recording these things for posterity. The internet, on the other hand, is designed around change. It does not make sense to keep an out-dated theory around, as it just takes up disk space and bandwidth. So there is a chance that we may lose little bits of historical knowledge here and there, and all that adds up.
Of course, it happens with books as well. However with books, the texts are printed once and forever and will contain its information until it is physically destroyed. Bits on a web server can be wiped out with just a command.
Which is why I don't think that they are getting rid of the book information, just the physical copies. It makes sense to keep the digitized copies available for research purposes, even if they may contain old and outdated information.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Because we know that every article on Wikipedia is 100% accurate and factual.
For those of you who didn't RTFA, the books aren't being thrown away, nor does it appear that students will be denied books. UT Austin is a huge school. The books in this particular library were reportedly transferred to other libraries.
Books are simply more comfortable to read. With a computer, it's you that has to move around it to be in the right place to read. With a book, you can carry it around, drop it, tilt it any which way you please, read it in bed, read it on the crapper. The book is completely silent, and is pretty resistent to a lot of things that would destroy a laptop. Books can also fit way more information on one page at a higher resolution.
its because the funding was cut on the UGL
its sad that they are proclaiming that this was the plan all along though
there were protests all over campus last semester to keep the library the way it was.
the large library (the one that most people used if they were using books) is still there.
to tell you the truth i didnt know a single person who used the UGL, so maybe this will end up being a nice fix to something that could have been just bulldozed instead.
*shrug*
i get back to campus in 3 days, so i guess i'll find out then
Doesn't anyone read Bradbury anymore?
Internet coffee would suit better.
Re:RTFA? mod this the fuck up
What secret data is in the "literature" that I cannot find on the internet? Show me one book that has information that cannot be found anywhere else that is of vital importance.
The majority of people who are going to the library are just reading what their class or course requires and not much more. The only way for people to actually get educated is for people to have a list of all the best books and the way the library is current set up its impossible to
1. read every single book
2. know which books are the best books
So solve these problems.
Now, BEGIN! You have 10 minutes to respond to this msg with your solution.
I didn't realize they had books in Texas in the first place. I'm actually surprised they didn't convert the "library" into a church or a gym.
The undergraduate library at UT hardly has any books anyway. It's basically a place where students go to study. I have never heard of anyone going to find a book there. They don't have research journals or anything like that. There are something like 15 other libraries on campus that have all the books and journals (eg. Life Sciences Library, Engineering Library, Main PCL Library, etc.).
Whats the point of reading fiction? What exactly are you learning from it?
I can understand people who read to study information for school, or for survival, but why waste valueable time on fiction? If I understood the value of fiction then perhaps I'd care more about books, but honestly in this fast paced competitive world, I do not have time for fiction. So enjoy reading Harry Potter or whatever good fiction books you like to read, I'll keep reading every book I have to read to stay one step ahead of you in the field/classroom, and we will both be happy.
It's one of the few good ideas the school had for making students' lives enjoyable
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
They are not getting rid of the books, just moving them to other facilities. What this basically amounts to is converting a library into a hangout spot with laptops. The University is *gasp* changing to fit the needs and desires of the students.
I don't think electricity will be our problem. We will sooner run out of oil.
Maybe we should all be learning all we can about science so we can survive peakoil. Hit the libraries!
The story title implies that the books had been replaced by some other (supposedly digital) resource, which is not true. The only reason this particular UT library branch does not have books is because they transferred the books to another library on the same campus, so technically, the library still has the books. Large universities like UT Austin have massive libraries with multiple branches on the same campus, so they can afford to empty one of the branches and make it into some sort of laptop lounge.
Whenever I have to read a large computer document, I print it out; they weigh less than a laptop, can be easily stored in a bookshelf and I can store more books in bookshelves than I will ever be able to read.
They also allow me to make notes, put markers, read anywhere, any time and even without electricity. They also allow me to keep both the text and my own work next to eachother at the same time without having to buy a second laptop.
Reading from the other comments on this topic, I gather that atleast 90% of the populace still prefers paper to screen reading for these and other reasons.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Tell us why you like how a book feels in your hand. Also tell me why its more important for a book to feel right than to have dozens of books in a PDA?
I honestly don't like reading from a PDA screen, but its a lot lighter than carrying books around.
What they are talking about is not removing the books from the UT library system. What they are talking about is, basically, converting a single undergraduate library into a student center, because undergrad libraries are no longer necesary in most places.
See, back in the Bad Old Days, undergrads were sort of like roaches. You wanted them out of sight, and you certainly didn't want them anywhere important. So they weren't permitted in the stacks at university libraries. Instead, you filled out a form and gave it to a librarian, and they brought you the book you requested. Fill out the form wrong and get the wrong book? Fill out another form. All this to prevent those scalliwag undergrads from mussing the stacks.
In the 50's, Harvard had what was (at the time) a revolutionary idea: don't just keep undergrads out of the stacks- quarantine them! They built Lamont library, the nations first undergraduate library. The shelves were filled with the sort of intro-level books on topics that undergrads were likely to research for their classes. There was a recreational reading collection, and rooms for group study. The undergrads got to browse the books and had a place to gather. The grad school and departmental libraries didn't have to interact with undergrads. Everyone was happy.
Since those heady days, things have changed a bit. Many university systems have replaced cantankerous old librarians and card catalogues with computer-indexed search systems, and English majors employed part-time to damage the bar code scanner. Many schools have open stacks now, and have opened all their libraries to undergraduates. Furthermore, the growth of collections means that more and more a dedicated undergraduate library can't house all the books that an undergrad might need. Now you have your collection divided between the grab-bag of books in the undergrad collection, the in-depth books in the departmental or grad school collection, and the overflow books available by request from the warehouse featured in "Raiders of the Lost Arc".
In such a situation, some schools (apparently such as UT) have found that the undergrad library is more of a bother than a help as a library. Undergrads still go there to study, but increasingly the books that they want are in other parts of the library system; for books that might be useful to both undergraduates and grad students and faculty, you either have to duplicate efforts or force grads and faculty to wander over to the undergrad library. So there's a logical solution: convert the undergrad library to what it really is- a student center for undergrads, oriented somewhat around studying and writing papers- and move the books back into the general library system, which everyone is already using anyway.
This has little or nothing to do with "taking the books out of libraries" as near as I can tell. UT will still have its giant collection of real books that you can check out and read when the power goes out, or on a plane for 12 hours, or in the bathroom without your eyes bleeding and falling out of your head. They will continue to buy new books as they are published, and maintain the old collection. No need to push the bibliophile panic button just yet.
a colourful sofa is so much more useful for research than say, 'The Art of Programming' by Dijkstra.
I've yet to see a undergrad course that did any more than just scratch the surface of a subject. Any research is going to be done by the grad students anyway.
Ignorance is amusing, stupidity is annoying.
All of mankinds knowlege in writing will slowly begin to dissapear. Books and print will someday be used as cheap fuel during a future worldwide economic depression. This will seem like a perfectly logical step as all knowledge will be databased and indexed across the internet.
Then, massive solar flares, or perhaps a meteorite, or maybe nuclear war, or even EMP from future unseen WMD, or ??? will wipe out human technology and we will be stuck without any record of past human knowlege. Or is this just a Hollywood scenario?
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Ya, the headline/summary is misleading but really people, RTFA. The books are not being burned, simply moved to other locations on campus.
It is true that books no longer play the role they used to in higher learning. As a PhD student, 75% of my reading is journal articles, accessed online from school or by connecting through a VPN. Being able to search out and access this material electronically is a MASSIVE time saver. Sure as hell beats photocopying articles in the library.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Does the library really need to be a social gathering place? Isn't the rest of the campus big enough to serve that purpose?
I guess it is easier to promote it as a college library without books rather than say they are closing the library and opening a coffee house, so they can make a quick buck.
How exactly do you read a 500 page book in comfort? The book would be so heavy and ugly that reading it is going to hurt your neck even more then staring at a screen hurts your eyes. Trust me I know from experience, I have never been able to finish a 500 page book.
Show us some of the secret information which cannot be found online. What book is so valueable that I cannot find any information like it on the net.
I can find anything online from programming, to websites on conspiracies. I see more diversity of information on the internet than in any library, and I can access websites from all around the world.
How does a library ever compare to the global noosphere?
Way to go. You've managed to say the stupidest thing I've heard in days.
You're "argument", if it can be called that, could just as well be used to argue for black people moving back to Africa (bye bye karma :), everyone in the U.S. believing in God, and any other majority totalling trumping the minority. And guess what? It'd still be a stupid argument in any of those cases.
It has nothing to do with the majority of people. The majority of people will never step foot into a physics laboratory. But most schools still have one. Strange, huh?
It also has nothing to do with being cool. If there was ever a time when the library was the cool place to hang out, I haven't heard of it.
Just because you, and some people you know, don't find libraries useful, doesn't mean universities and colleges should get rid of them for everyone. There's still a large number of people, even if they're a minority) who prefer reading books to reading online. I'm thinking about going to graduate school, and not having a traditional library would rule out a school immediately, no questions asks.
Maybe not
Why is everyone getting all worked up over this? It's not like they are getting rid of books? They are just converting one of their library facilities into a internet/hangout/study facilities.
The article even states that the books were moved to other facilities on campus. It seems like a good idea to me...why not move the books to a central location, and have another facility dedicated to some of the other things people use libraries for? That way, if you want books, you can go to the book location. If you want to get together with your friends and study or surf the web, go to the other location.
It's not like this is even really a new concept. My university had two "libraries" right next to each other, the "undergrad" where there were desks, computers, etc, and the real library next door where they kept the books. It worked out perfectly.
What is this irrational nonsense about Africa and how exactly did Africa get involved in the debate about libraries?
It has nothing to do with the majority of people. The majority of people will never step foot into a physics laboratory. But most schools still have one. Strange, huh?
It also has nothing to do with being cool. If there was ever a time when the library was the cool place to hang out, I haven't heard of it.
If you have a "good" culture then you'll consider the library the coolest place to hang out. If you are in college and you don't hang out at the library, perhaps you should spend your time doing something else because thats basically what college is about. You pay to hang out at the library, talk to professors, and maybe occassionally with students. If you go to a college to party, then you are letting your valueable money go to waste and I'm fine with that because its not my money.
Just because you, and some people you know, don't find libraries useful, doesn't mean universities and colleges should get rid of them for everyone. There's still a large number of people, even if they're a minority) who prefer reading books to reading online. I'm thinking about going to graduate school, and not having a traditional library would rule out a school immediately, no questions asks.
If you are going to debate with someone, at least debate things I've actually said. I never said libraries werent useful. I said books arent useful to me personally. I don't have a use for books anymore because I know the technology. I'm posting here on slashdot when I could be reading a book, the newspaper, etc. Why? The internet has more diversity of information. The library has a very restricted westernized style of handling information, a lot of the best information might not be at that specific library you are at, and I doubt you want to travel from library to library looking for that important book.
I don't know about you but all that matters to me is portability and access to information. PDAs are more portable than books, and the internet is a better model of distribution. These are facts and you cannot argue against it.
There seems to be plenty of reason that a book is better and plenty of reasons that a electronic copy is better. I think the best thing would be to have both available. If every book had a CD in the back cover containing an electronic copy of it I think that would be great.
You could still sit down and read the book in a nice comfy chair, but you could also take the CD with you when you go somewhere. You would also have the advantage of using the CD as a reference once you're done reading. You could also do searches instead of having to look through indexes and page through chapters and then once you've found what you're looking for you could go back to the book and read it from there if you really wanted to.
I do not need a power plant to power a PDA. There are nuclear power plants, there is solar energy, there are many ways to get energy. Oil will make energy more expensive in the short term but the access to food is a bigger concern than the access to energy. I'll build my own generator and use solar energy if energy is the problem.
Thanks, I should know better than to post while drunk.
Maybe not
Where I went to university, the libraries weren't really good hangout places. The ones that got used as hangout places were too loud to think. Plus there was always scum creeping into the library to steal stuff. Given that the average student has a laptop, I'm guessing this is more of a problem. Anyway, books&concentration and hanging out don't really work -- it is good that they are giving students what they want. If they want to make it like Starbucks, perhaps they should consider leasing the library to Starbucks, and having them operate a giant, Texas-sized Starbucks.
I studied in my room, but I went to the library to check out/inspect books.
I'm also wondering how much the computer labs get used these days. When I was in school, computers were expensive, and PCs were only just starting to run BSD. But now you can get a PC and run whatever you want (even Solaris), so there isn't much reason to go to a lab, unless you need to use a bunch of machines. So I'm wondering if students work in computer rooms anymore, or if they just toil at home. If that's true, they might as well convernt the computer rooms into something else too.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
You do not have access to the resources available ONLY to university students via the web. This includes electronic versions of thousands of journals, databases, dictionaries, etc, etc. Yes, books are still important, but don't confuse your web with the electronic resources available to students at any major university. We certainly aren't using google (or google scholar :P) for research. At least not those of us getting passing grades.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Yes, but do they have books?
having compers and internet access and coffee is all great, but do they have books or ebooks as well?
library without books is just coffeehouse.
Moving the books to other libraries and dedicating the space to student gatherings/ studies is not that bad of a thing. Considering that there seems to be a need of group study areas, this might help with that.
We already have computer labs, laptops for check out, and wifi in there. So really, the main addition are the colorful chairs.
[insert generic slashdot meme]
How many germs would be on the average book that someone took to the crapper and back when compared to the germs on an ebook? In a time when birdflu and other illnesses are being made popular don't you think we should be worried about the safety of book bugs?
Books aren't a collection of highlights, they're (potentially) multi-page, often multi-hundred-page long works. Maybe you;re able to read somethng that long on a screen comfortably and efficiently, I can't.
The library just isn't as cool as it once was simply because no one wants books anymore. We outnumber folks like you
This is a fucking UNIVERSITY. If university students can't read an entire book except in blipvert fragments, it's goodbye to civilisation as we know it.
That actually sounds pretty cool. Though there's nothing like curling up with a book, good or not, it is a pretty cool idea. I might set up my rumpus similar to this (with the colours and stuff. Right now it's cold tile and brick/wall with a lot of grey and silver stuff). Purple is good. lol. Coffee is even better! I wish Aussie Highschool libraries were setup like this :D Ours would improve vastly!
I wrote an essay on this topic, Academic Libraries in the Digital Age.
While they're at it, they should make an Amsterdam-style coffeeshop instead - then the socializing will become much ... funnier. At least that's the association that *I* made immediately upon reading the post.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
But wait hear me out, I said /addition/. Until we manage to archive all these books and come up with a suitable replacement to paper for long-term reading sessions we need to keep the books.
These people are not really adding a library, but converting one into a study building and moving the books elsewhere. Come finals, it's not as easy as you'd think to find places to study the way you'd like. I need a table enough for me and perhaps 3 other study partners, and freedom to audibly discuss/teach each other the material. You can't do this in the dorms, you have other roommates who're either sleeping or blasting music, or studying with their groups on the only living room tables
This sets us out on a trek to discover a place to study, and the library is crammed pretty much at all times during exam weeks. Computer labs around here have all the computers in small cubicles or lined up on tables, so you can't talk all in a row.
We end up spilling over into coffeeshops for peaceful efficient study.
You'd think it'd be easy to find a place for 4 people to sit together at a table and study. But it isn't the case at our college.
There is a hilarious book by (New Zealander) Sir Bob Jones in which he writes about a university in the UK exactly like this. The book is called "Degrees for Everyone" and is a great read.b Jones1877270709
http://www.nzbooks.com/nzbooks/product.asp?sku=Bo
This episode is the first thing that came to mind when I read the story:c iousness/episode/21470/summary.html
http://www.tv.com/the-outer-limits/stream-of-cons
The moral of the story? Always keep books around!
You mean the fat whiny guy from Michigan?
There a two different usage patterns concerning books in my humble opinion.
Research, where I really enjoy beeing able to full-text search through thousands of (e.g.) pdfs and online information (through spinweb etc.)
Reading a book I much prefer if it is for entertainment or if I have to dig deep into a subject. There I don't need full-text search and a book has no other fancy features that distract my attention.
They are moving them to one of the other 15 libraries on campus, most likely the PCL. Its a damn good idea, barely anyone goes in the UGL besides to meet with a study group or just pass some time between classes in the first place. Personally, I wouldn't shed a tear if they tore down the UGL in the first place, its ugly and not very functional. Good riddance I say. The title of this story is a bit misleading, and probably really needs to be changed before we have another 500 replies about "SAVE THE BOOKS!"
At the moment if you buy a book it is yours and you can read it whenever you want, even be it in 100 years. For online-editions of journals and books this is different, you have to pay a (huge) yearly fee in order to read them and use the search engines.
So will the "digital information" of the future be "pay per book" or "pay per view?"
I'm a big fan of dead trees. Huge. I've ranted about how great the interface is for years, but this is one instance where it kinda makes sense.
:p. If I can just print that one bit out I'll be happy.
I would never buy an encylopedia now that I've got web access. I wouldn't buy a research paper either. The reason is that I only want to use a small fraction and I'll need it for 20 minutes whilst I extract the bit I need and plagerise it mercilessly
Its these circumstances when I want a tablet like device sitting next to my PC. Its dimesions should be somewhere between A5 and A4 notepad and weigh about the same (200g). The interface should be exactly the same as the iPod. A simple menu for selecting the book you want, and a scroll wheel for flicking through the pages. Left and right buttons to move back and forth through individual pages. There should be a stylus, so that you can highlight text. As you are never writing to the device, highlighting automatically places that text / picture into the clipboard of the host Mac/PC. Its must be wireless, preferably bluetooth, although the majority of its storage will come from a MMC card if you need to transfer alot of books. The screen should be relective, and black and white - no backlight nastiness. I don't need or want color or animation - yet.
Oh... and I want a pony.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I do most of my reading online, but I still prefer a good book to staring at my retina-burning CRT monitor. The only computer I've seen with anywhere near the reading comfort of a good book is my 10 year old Apple PowerBook 190 with a greyscale LCD. I dare anyone who prefers reading on a computer to read "The Gulag Archipeligo" on said computer and tell me that books aren't better. But, I digress. Libraries are wonderful places to spend a nice, quiet afternoon. Books as far as the eye can see, including those that those in certain religious organizations wouldn't like me to read.
And they wonder why I left Windows.....
Interesting point. In fact, I noticed this with a game called Netrek that I used to play in the early '90s at Cal (it's still around--the game and the University :)
Basically, people got sucked into an open source game with a very flat learning curve and complex teamplay by going to labs and seeing people playing it during work breaks and late at night (despite a NO GAMES) policy that was spottily enforced by the "web trolls". A lot of the cultural aspects of the CSUA, a CS student social organization, also stemmed from people hanging out and working in close proximity to each other in these labs.
When home PCs (and broadband in dorms) became more ubiquitous, a lot of this was lost; the geeks didn't hang out so much anymore. Interestingly enough, at about the same time you started getting an upsurge of people wanting to major in CS-related topics due to their perceived profitability in the dot-com market, so you got a far higher percentage of non-hardcore-geek types who just did the academic work and that was that.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
so first off they haven't thrown out the books they are still in the system for the very few who want them. and as for where the web is going as far as research goes http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/ and this is only a small beginning. and to the guy talking about his 300 page book about moth "probiscus" its proboscis and i got that from the internet. i have more confidence in a person who has read the book slection available on the internet then the person browsing the local book stores harry potter section.
This is what happens when you too many overeducated people with too much time on their hands, and too little NONacacemic experience, talking to too few people about how brilliant each other's ideas are.
Sounds like it's time for a little professional decapitation in Texas. TEXAS -- aaaHA! "This explains much".
In my little corner of usenet we call this getting trapped in your own bunghole.
A library w/o books is worth that a stupid idea, it's dangerous.
I have faith that the enumeration of specifics is presented elsewhere.
My son's middle school was designed in the mid 90's. It did not really have a refrence library only banks of computers. This year they sacrifised two clasrooms and converted them to a complete refrence library containing real books. The quality of the childrens work improved.
For those that haven't attended larger schools (then again, neither have I...just visited them), most major state universities have several libraries, even several major libraries. They are basically just pulling the books out of one and distributing them to the others (which, I'm guessing, have even been expanded physically over the years...so no net loss).
The only reason this is even a story is because they are still calling it a "library," rather than an additional student union building or electronic research center or whatever.
My school basically already has all these things, they're just all located in the one library building we have. Coffee shop, lounge area, 3 large computer areas, a couple smaller ones, reservable conference rooms, etc...all scattered among the four floors. It's probably pretty nice to be able to cordon all these off into one library building...it sucks when some jackass who has been hanging out in the lounge area too long thinks it's appropriate to wander into the stacks or study areas talking on his cell phone or just generally making a load of noise.
Upon further reading of the article, I even noticed this:
"So to ease some of the apprehension, administrators took the word "library" out of their vocabulary when referring to the Flawn Academic Center."
So they're not even calling it a library. It's just a major university closing one of it's libraries and using it for a different purpose. This is news how?
The only thing I wonder is did they distribute the 90,000 books to other libraries on this campus, or through other campuses throughout the system. I'd hope, this being their main campus, that they'd try to maintain the collection there...especially since in a state the size of Texas the next closest campus is probably not exactly nearby (unlike say A(rizona)SU or UC(alifornia), where there are multiple campuses in the same Metro area as the "main" campuses).
As a librarian, I find this rather sad.
Whilst the internet has its place in the information age, it is not the same as having the information printed out in front of you. People that I deal with find that its better to have a solid object in front of you to refer to, rather than a hyperlink which can dissapear overnight.
I'm thinking about going to graduate school, and not having a traditional library would rule out a school immediately, no questions asks
...
I live close to several good universities (in so. Cal) and make use of their libraries. The library doesn't have to be on your campus
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Example: go to the New England Journal of Medicine website, sign up for one of their free accounts, and see how limited you are in what you can look at. Paying customers get a LOT more access. Now, that should not be a problem for a university, even if the website costs an additional fee, they can afford to buy access to a website. Unfortunately, that means students will need to go through another step of authentication to get to the information on the website. If you add too many levels of authentication, the average user gets annoyed and stops using the service.
Amen! PubMed is a step in the right direction, and abstracts are useful, but we need to make the process of getting complete text seamless."Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Ha-ha!
People write things down in books because it's permanent.
People write things down online because it's not.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I knew Texans couldn't read, but books have pictures too!
The reference section has been replaced by air-hockey tables and a make-your-own-coffee bar.
When you are studying batchelors or masters degree, I would argue that there are only handfull of books that you really need to study and learn. Some of them teach basics, leveling the ground on where you can build your knowledge. In my opinion, it would be better if those books where covered in tuition, so they would make the basic foundation of everyones library. The rest of material, articles and publications would be accessed from the web. In this way students would have the necessary groundworks and ways to depthen their knowledge with the newest information.
The current system where every course has atleast two or three books, which usually are mediocre, isn't very efficient. Students just read and read, either becoming totally mindless preparing only for the exam, or coming very frustrated to reading bad books (books with false logic, wrong facts). It would be better just read the classics and then search for additional information either from research databases, or the Internet, or by buing yourself books. Buying books by yourself actually is one of the best ways to learn, because 1) you have to make a decission on what book to buy 2) check who is recommending and 3) estimate the value of the book. And one should remember that buying books is not that hard or expensive, by buying used books from Amazon one can save big pennies, and using Amazon and Google Print, one can know pretty good what he/her is getting.
In this context, I would welcome more moving a way from the library context in university cycles. Atleast in my own university, our library is just a pretty building which just wastes resources that could have been used better otherwis.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
...Well?
Also, the information in books don't disappear after someone stops paying for the webspace!
Currently there is still some information (however obscure) which only exists in books which went out of print 20 years ago. Yet whenever there is a revival of interest, we can always go back to them.
If Socrates and Plato had owned websites (or blogs) the truth is we would never have even heard of them today, becuase the internet is inherently volatile! Once there is no longer anyone willing to pay to broadcast the infomation, it vanishes.
IMHO, although the internet may be the best way of communicating information(or knowledge), books are still the best way of preserving it.
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
First, paper books standing in shelves provide the opportunity to find the unexpected: when looking up a book, you come up with another, or many others, even on passing alleys. In this way I have read many research work with which I would have never come across otherwise, and which contributed both to my general understanding of science and to solve my particular problem at the moment, besides satisfying my curiosity. This phenomenum occurs also when looking up a word in a dictionary, and does not happen when doing so in m-w.com
Second, paper books cannot and will not ever be substituted by laptops with internet access before all this technological milestones are reached: infinite bateries, extreme ressistance (spilled coffee, stepping onto it, using it as door stop or to step on it to reach a book at the top shelf), and the degree of comfortability associated with books such as bending it and holding it with one hand without problems.
Besides, internet contents is manipulated to such an extent that one cannot trust a website will have the same text every other day. What is one supposed to do, cache 90,000 books? And even worse: when information access can be regulated, it usually is, meaning users will be directed to the "officially approved" books and versions of texts, meaning, most of the library contents won't ever be used or even, there won't be a real chance to reach it unless one clicks in deliberately obscured links. All the above leading to all students learning the standard theory corpus and nothing else, which is quite against the exercise of curiosity demanded on a scientist.
that grabbing and flipping the pages is not an extra step?
My anedocte (it's probably the 2nd time I posted this):
I am a public employee, and I had to pass a rather difficult test to get my job (500 candidates, 5 openings, I was #3). And I studied all of the test's subjects (civil law, constitutional law, legislative process, administrative law) off a Palm III's screen -- translated all texts and codelaw into HTML and plucker'ed them: autoscroll was my friend. With some smart indexing and x-refing. Now, if I was to carry all this with me (I studied a lot while commuting) I would have to carry appoximately 20kg of books, instead of 200g in my pocket. And I obviously have no problem reading from a screen.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I'm thinking about going to graduate school, and not having a traditional library would rule out a school immediately...
I should hope so! In my field -- a branch of physics full of tech savvy people, so I assume this is true in most any field -- none of the seminal papers and texts of the field are available electronically. Toss out those books and you've tossed out any chance of doing any meaningful scholarly research.
Before anyone starts bemoaning the death of the book, it should be noted that the University of Texas has at least twenty libraries. The one being replaced is the generic "Undergraduate Library", which I understand has always been more of a study location than a research library.
All I can say is that this is a major loss of culture, a step forward for technology and a step backwards for culture.
Is it really so difficult to undertand that we have to find some sort of equilibrium in the development of our daylife?
It is a good thing that they are inserting new computers in libraries, since the methods of lerning and communicatinga are develping rapidly, but we don't ahve to forget the importance of the books.
The most appropriate solution is to have a parallel work of both books and computer, technology and tradition. That is because now thay are two mutually inclusinve elements, which menas that one cannot have an acceptable knowloge without both of them together.
Just when you think that we are evolving, you see that truly we are declining.
Shame
...and we shall call it 'Starbooks'!
Ok, they didn't get rid of the books, they just moved them to a different library.
And no, I don't think books will be going anywhere soon. Currently, computers are not a viable replacement for books... they're just a useful augmentation.
Case in point: I have a subscription to O'reily's Safari. It's an excellent tool for finding some tidbit or for browsing a tutorial for a new language. i.e. One-time reads. However, my reference books (Nutshell, etc.) are dogeared, annotated hardcopies at my desk.
The only thing I can see replacing books is something that combines the power of computers with the low overhead and form factor of books. This ePaper (trademarked? maybe?) type stuff is what I'm talking about. Imagine a book about the size of your average Dan Brown bestseller (not Neal Stephenson... too big) You turn to the first page and it's your Biology textbook. Hmm, not what you wanted. Tap your margin and get a nice list of what books you have in your library. You want to pick up where you left off in Quicksilver. The page blurs, and viola, the first page is now 2/3 of the way through the (much larger) book, with a little tab where you marked the last line you were on.
Time passes, though, and you have to study for that biology test coming up. You tap the line your on, and place a book dart. Then you pick your biology book. You're on chapter 3, so you just FLIP through until you're on chapter 3 (or jump to it using the interface). You get the section on the peculiarty of ADP and look at the margin where YOU'D WRITTEN SOME NOTES! Hmmm, let's take a closer look at these notes. You tap them and your notes expand to take up the entire page, while the textbook slides over to the left (or right, for you southpaws).
Unfortunately, you still have to pay $250 for the damn textbook. Unless you get the softcover ones exported to India for $30, like I used to
When you can have that level of functionality AND a reasonably sized electronic library available, then you can begin to phase out hardcopies. I long for that day. Not because I don't like books, quite the contrary, but so I don't have to carry the weight of the 2-3 books and laptop I carry around with me on a daily basis.
"According to the article the missing books will be replaced by "colorful overstuffed chairs for lounging, barstools for people watching, and booths for group work. In addition to almost 250 desktop computers, there will be 75 laptops available for checkout, wireless Internet access, computer labs, software suites, a multimedia studio, a computer help desk and repair shop, and a cafe.""
Laid back lounge? Overimplementation of technology? Yep sounds like Texas to me.
Maybe it was university administrations' fear of more protests like in the late 60's. Maybe it was corporatism and greed of the 80's. But take a look at the buildings that originally served as student unions. Many don't exist anymore, they've been knocked down or sold. Most of the remainder are unrecognizable. Sure the shell (fascade?) is still there, but look inside. All the "renovations" have taken away meeting spaces and common areas. They're full of pretty much every thing except for places for students to meet.
Adding more group and social spaces to the physical components of the libraries is a good thing. But don't forget that books and other physical media have been refined for centuries to be convenient, durable and easy to use.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
University of Texas has eleven separate libraries. All of the books from this library were distributed around to the other libraries (of which there are still more than enough). None of the books are actually gone.
Apart from the loss of physical books (which I think can be better then a text presented i data form), I'm sad that the library is going to lose some of it's strong points.
When I wss an undergrad, the library was the one place I could go to do serious studying. Unlike the dorms which could be loud and filled with destractions, the library was quiet, detached. I loved having a place to hide from the world like that.
It seems to me that the students could be better served by taking all of their recently digitized resources and make it availble from anywhere on campus. If students want to hang out in a social envrionment while doing research, fine. I'm sure this particular Texas university has a great Student Union. With computers, there's no need to be physically in the library.
But leave the books as they are, and let the library remain a quiet and detached institution it is.
The Internet is generally stupid
This is just sad.
When it comes to non-technical fields of study the class of information you can get online is VERY much lower than what is available in printed form.
Sure, you can google for "robert frost" but you're going to get a few quotes from his works and a ton of commentary which is probably more of a hinderance than help to your study of literature.
I use the internet all the time for studying a lot of different subjects but nothing beats a good solid book for the feeling and the efficiency.
It's way easier to walk into the library and ask the librarian "where can i read about such and such" and the librarian already knows what it is since so many other students have studied it over the years and asked about it.
Does google have that ability? sure, it can tell me what link most people clicked when they searched for the same thing i did but it can't tell me which one is the commentary and which is a purchaseable PDF of the complete works of Chaucer.
-is
Once again, the South leads the way in stupid ideas for education.
I know the books weren't destroyed or anything - I have RTFA.
However, I'm addressing the computer screen vs. paper books debate. I had a bad case of Lyme Disease this winter - actually, I still have it just not as bad. Anyway, one of the neurological problems was that I had a problem with different contrast levels - i.e. reading bright letters on a dark background or vice versa really SUCKED. Sucked as in gave me a massive headache after 5 min or so. Books were much better in this respect.
-b.
I take it this is because they took all the books on evolution and similar "secular" science topics that-are-just-a-theory and burned them (in between sessions praying for the assassination of Chavez). Plenty of room now to hang out and discuss the Good News! Hehe Americans, you are the laughing stock of the educated world.
Background: I attended UT Austin as a professional student 1973-1981, and did refresher work in 2003-2004.
First, it was officially named the Academic Center since at least 1973. It was known informally as the Undergraduate Library. Renaming to "Peter T. Flawn Academic Center" occurred much later.
Second, what is really happening here is that the Academic Computing and Information Technology Services organization is growing, and needed space. Rather than build a building, it was far cheaper to take the remaining space in an existing building. The ground floor was computer labs, magazines, and study carrels. The second floor was ACITS offices, a huge open lab, and a large open space. While I was there, ACITS filled the open space with support offices, and also took some of the open lab for office space. The computers that had been located in that part of the open space were relocated elsewhere in the building, mainly to the third floor. The third floor contained what few books were left, along with the media library (formerly the audio library).
Finally, there is one question I haven't seen addressed, and I really wish I was a student so I could get the question asked in public. The library system had always paid for the guards for the building. Library system budget cuts forced the Academic Center to remove the guards on third shift. When the guards went away, ACITS closed the open lab on that shift, because there was now no one to make even nominally certain that hardware didn't walk out the door. There were some loud grumbles about closing the biggest 24-hour open lab on campus, but nothing ever came of it. Now that the building is entirely an ACITS facility, will ACITS find the money for guards to have the building open for students 24 hours a day?
And I should mention that I spent a LOT of time studying in the Academic Center and using that open lab.
Well, now, that depends. For example, if you get a girl to go to the paleontology section of the library with you, that might be considered "cool."
I don't know about you, but when I was doing research at my alma mater's library, I was working not with books, but with computers almost all of the time. Granted, the topics I was searching on (marketing in supermarkets, Colombian conservation law, kidnappings in Latin America) mostly required very recent information. The other thing is... well... books are long and supremely unsearchable. If I was writing a thesis, or any report of any real heft, I'd be more than happy to read through several books. But periodicals served their purpose, and what was great about them is that they were searchable before I printed them to make sure I had all the information I needed.
Even to this day, Google lacks the thoroughness of most search tools found at libraries, simply because this information is not free, and not freely available. Google Scholar's abstracts are a good start, but no match for getting the full article at no cost from a library.
As long as texts are maintained, I have no problem maintaining a mostly electronic database of all this information.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Even though I applaud the move to digital format, I think the world isn't quite ready to be paper-less yet. First, a good alternative to a computer screen must be invented, and then made popular and affordable. Something like a really flat piece of 'digital paper' that allow you to download to it, mark stuff and navigate easily. I vaguely recall apple inventing a screen that can be rolled up, or something. It would also be great for ebooks, I still find pda's to be too bulky and have too small screens to be much use.
When UT decides to get rid of that musty old Gutenberg bible - I'd be willing to take it off their hands. Heck, I'll even pay shipping.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Reminds me of a quote, something like :-
"It was once thought that if a billion chimpanzees sat hitting typewriter keys, they would, among other things, reproduce the works of Shakespear. The Internet has shown that this is not true."
The fact is that there is far more rubbish than good stuff on the Internet. Those of us who have a strong overlap with books, especially if educated before the days PCs, are strongly aware of this. I recently searched for a battery charging circuit and found a design that was horrifically dangerous (mains to the battery through a 60 Watt bulb and a diode - the photo showed it connected up with crocodile clips). At least the reputable book publishers filter out such junk, but there is no equivalent mechanism on the internet yet in sight.
Why do the PC's need to be gathered together in the library? Can't the students use PCs in their own rooms. And what is the change from books to PCs got to do with providing "colorful overstuffs chairs", or lifting the bans on eating and talking. Would you want to use a keyboard that someone else has just tipped their curry over? And what of the "barstools for people watching"? Can't these people find any interesting paint to watch while it dries?
Doesn't sound like an effective learning environment to me - more like the University abdicating its obligations and responsibilities.
While I'm actually very fond of reading large amounts of text on the computer - I've been making my way through many of the classics via Project Gutenberg - there's nothing that quite replaces the feel and smell of having a book that's over a hundred years old in your hands. At that, I've only had luck with reading books with the print part of it. Illustrations and things often slow to a crawl. So nice that real life has no lag...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
So--is the complete text of all those books which are being replaced by "coloful overstuffed chairs" now available in an electronic format accessible from the library computers?
Also, has this particular library at UT Austin been in the habit of checking out only 75 individual books at a time?
If the answer to either of these questions is "No," then the students, and the Texas taxpayers, are getting a Texas-sized downgrade in value.
I'm a big fan of electronic books--when they are an improvement over paper.
Well, at least the paper books have been transferred to other libraries, so that information is still available somewhere.
And hey--the students get a multimedia studio, so it's all cool, right?
I love technology and what it can bring to a learning experience but laptops and desktops should complement their periodical counterparts not replace them
Let me get this straight: Science and technology interest declines and it's Bush's fault. Yet the bastion of liberalism, the University System, is taking books out of libraries and this is forward thinking? THIS, my friends, is why education in America is fscked up! My contention has always been there's TOO much money in education.
In our local library the entire front area is filled with DVD/videos, InterNet terminals, sofas and reference librarians. If you make it to the back or basement you eventually find a bookshelf.
Ditto the local Barnes & Noble. They also have a coffeehouse and periodicals in front.
Why not? Texas already has a president with a Summer reading list without a reader.
--
make install -not war
Smart move. Rather than fight the students who wanted a place to hang out and do online research, they expanded the area dedicated to the other way of learning on campus: talking to fellow students. And the other libraries now have a perfect excuse to eject those who are chatting and IM'ing.
Without book stacks, future generations of students can't "hook-up" in the stacks!
:)
My god, talk about the end of a college tradition!
I work at UT, in one of the departments that is helping to transform the Flawn Academic Center (formerly the Undergraduate Library) into a comprehensive electronic learning center (my words).
To get it out of the way first, no books are being discarded. They are being moved to other libraries on campus (we have about 15 libraries at the University of Texas).
New resources are being added to the FAC. We will have electronic classrooms where teachers and students can learn to use electronic resources for research, learning, and teaching. We will also offer many of our holdings in electronic format (text, sound, and video), while still offering the hard copies of books and journals to students through our library system.
One of the trends that we have seen lately is that students have chosen to use electronic resources at the expense of physical holdings. Often students use inappropriate online resources or use good resources poorly. By providing services that help students use electronic resources effectively and learn when other resources may be more appropriate, we are hoping to increase our students' abilities to continue learning and thrive in their future careers in this modern world.
Also, we are hoping to prepare our professors to use technology to enhance their teaching in the classroom. Many professors need just as much instruction as the students because their training did not include the use of electronic resources for research or teaching. By offering instruction to professors, we hope that they will be able to more deeply engage the students in their classes and areas of study.
And the reserve reading room will still be a quiet, dank, smelly cave in the basement without any windows, decent lighting or photocopiers.
;)
Not that I've ever been there. It just seems to me that the one place students actually have to go in a library anymore is the reserve reading room. Every RRR I've ever seen has always been a grungy, mold ridden cellar (sans vin). Despite years of renovations to other places on campus' across N.America.
It seems to me that they want the undergrad library to more closely resemble the grad student lounge
Huh. Well, who'da thunk it.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Now Winston Smith can "correct" history with just a few keystrokes.
Orwell really was an optimist, wasn't he?
My last year at UT (1996), they had already removed the centralized line printers ($0.00125/page) and replaced them with local laser printers ($.10/page).
They also replaced the dumb terminals, Macs, AND Unix workstations with Windows boxes.
Wow, I haven't heard of the "UGL" in a loooong time. As best as I can recall, the most I got out of it in college was a few dates here and there. There is a lot of talent running around down there in those UT Undergrad libraries! Hell, it was almost like a club - with books.
And for those that don't know, UT has at least (7) libraries that I can think of. There are more, for sure, but it's a really big campus so I probably never got to them. This is NOT a big deal. UT is not "giving up" books. Jeez, get a grip.
Rebelling against the previous generations used to be about stuff like war or freedoms. You've chosen reading and libraries. Congratulations on having the worst chosen generational gap ever. So, what's the best book you've ever read on a PDA? Also, would you care to show me data that says people who read only in electronic form are a majority?
there is nothing like books when it comes to learning
But what if the reason for reducing libraries, isn't to shift towards e-learning, but instead pressure from book SHOPS?
If I were an amoral university principal - or even a moral principal at an underfunded university - I'd take nice fat cheques from the bookshops and reduce the libraries.
A good on-campus bookshop and a laptop sales/repair outlet could really clean up in a university with insufficient library facilities.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
If the UT started to charge students an extra fee based on useage. Somekind of reading fee, like Stallmans scary article... ...or if the UT started editting out 'non-politically correct' information and adding 'politically correct' corrections into the electronic document. It is hard to tell, impossible for the causual user, if the electronic version has been changed.
I realize that the UT is sort of a business and if they don't provide what the customers want, the customers (the students) go somewhere else. But who says that undereducation students (they are going to get educated) know or even can know what they want.
It would far easier to increase library useage by assigning more out-of-classroom work that requires the library, than to turn the library into a coffee house.
Anyway how can anyone study and concentrate in the midst of a social gathering?
This is a really bad idea, even if it increases useage of the "library" it will no longer be a library and will non-conducive to learning.
*click**beep**beep* Scotty, One to Mod up!
Can't the apocalypse wait? I have some stuff to do today....
The first books were scrolls like Torah and the Alexandrian Library. Torah scrolls are quaint, but a pain to move to another section. Around the first century AD people started making codexes. I think it was because as trade with papyrus source areas such as Egypt and Mesopotamia decline, scolars started using animal skins (vellum) as substitute. Its easier to cut these into squares rather than sew them into scrolls. Note that codexes appeared in northern India about the same time- block printing of Buddhist texts.
The next big advance was to use capitalization and punctuation to make words, sentences and paragraphs easier to distinguish. People used to run all the words and sentences together written in capital letters (see a Torah or ancient Roman inscriptions). Printing made books cheaper- from a couple years' average wages of an average worker to months, but first imitated the bulky form-factor of vellum books. The bulk was moviated by the expense of parchement and cloth-based paper.
Finally in the 1800s printers started printing hand-sized pocket books for the masses. Cheap wood-based paper facilitated this. Plus public education exploded literacy and demand. books finally became convenient and relatively cheap (a few days wages or less).
So my point is that physcial books had a long learning curve. The computer replacement of books will have some learning curve too, but I am bit surprised it is taking so long. Cheap readers with good ergonomics (high contrast, 300 dpi tablets, $100) are at hand. Publishes are relucant to distribute their source in digital form cheaply. When eBooks copy iTunes and drop to few bucks or an unlimited monthly subscription, then these may take off.
At the University I attend, "library renovation" did not include any new books. It did however include a new computer lab, leather chairs and couches, and food carts. If you walked in the front door, it'd be hard to tell it was a library. I realize that most research is being done on the internet these days, but some of us actually like to read.
Dude. +1 for slipping in a Max Headroom reference there.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Dubya's from texas but didn't go to UT AFAIK. He would have been happy for Yale to have such a "library". No doubt the only kind he'd ever use. He'll start pushing "no latte' left behind" when he finds out how much you can cut education spending by not having to put books in libraries. Haliburton could get the coffee consession. I mean where is the cash flow in lending books for free?
Is starbuck's now a library too?
Sweet! When this is done world wide we will be one badass solar flare, or EMP burst away from having to manually rewrite the entire knowledge base of mankind. You know backups will be inadequate or non working.
Books don't burn - at least not very well..
The Nazis learned that the hard way when they tried to get rid of "entartete Autoren"...
It seems that some libraries on the UW Madison campus are doing the same thing - putting all journals which are online into storage.
Some advantages:
1) You can search articles.
2) Much faster now to retrieve an article.
Some disadvantages:
1) Reading from ambient-lit paper much easier on eyes.
2) Eventually, access to on-line journals will probably require some kind of identification that you are a student (student #, etc). So if you're a visiting student, somebody just interested in peeking into some medical research to see what it is you've got, a student temporarily not enrolled, etc. you'll be completely out of luck. I think this is discussed in Lawrence Lessig's book.
3) Noise from people whacking away on their keyboards.
4) Atmosphere. There's nothing like just being around a bunch of books to get you "in the mood". Laugh if you will, but even the smell of books is imporant. The smell of a hot monitor just doesn't compare.
5) Visual cues. Looking at a rack of journals, you may get an idea of how much a subject encompasses. Or the well-turned pages of an article give an idea of how important it has been. Heck, despite knowing when an article was written, it really only "hits home" when you see the aged yellow pages.
6) People annoyed by reading a monitor (and there are many, despite the "new generation"'s claims) will print the article out anyways. I wonder if this wouldn't lead to more paper waste in some cases.
I'm all for digitizing journals and books, but - eesh - keep the printed version around as well.
They're remodeling soon -- the website for it talks about primarily about seating space improvements (huh, what lack of seating? Usually most people in the library are standing, in my experience) despite that there is a shortage of book space. Further, I've heard a rumor from a respected faculty member that they're going to send all the journals that are otherwise available electronically (no doubt for a recurring fee - what happens if they have to quit paying?) to the "flagship" campus fifty miles down the road that already has them. Mind you, they've already quit taking paper delivery on some of these, turning students at the large campus I attend (as opposed to the slightly larger one down the road) into second-class citizens who have to rely on interlibrary loan (if we know the title of the article we want) to get anything that's still under a journal's electronic publication embargo, which often lasts a year after print publication.
Most college campuses of any respectable size have a student union or similar facility that provides plenty of places to sit around and shoot bull. Further, most colleges and universities generally provide adequate computer lab space (except maybe during finals week or other high-demand times), and of course wireless networking is almost to be expected these days. There are chairs and computers elsewhere -- but only a library has massive quantities of books available for perusal.
You prefer to read from a book because it's a superior technology. The book's resolution is far higher than the screen, as books are typically printed at a resolution of 1500dpi or better, compared to around 100dpi for most modern monitors. The book's display is an absorptive technology, which is easier on your eyes than the projective nature of the monitor. You also can't beat the book's infinite "battery life," compared to a few hours for notebook computers.
While technologies like digital ink, which is an absorptive display that doesn't consume power unless you're changing the text, may offer a superior technology to books in the future, the book is a much better technology than current computers for reading large amounts of text.
At least that's how it's happened in CT...many schools met the education goals "No Child Left Behind", but the government didn't cough up the money they were promised! WTF? 150Billion so G.W. can avenge daddy-bush in the mid-east? But we can't pay for our kids' education?
Blar.
This story reminds me of the Star Trek episode 'Court Martial' where Kirk's lawyer actually has a collection of books that he actually reads.
My alma mater build a new library with x square feet of space to hold n books.
They needed these figures to qualify the sports teams for the next level class.
To achieve this this feat, they mixed the bound serials and the regular stacks together so that together they had the required n books.
Building the library ruined the funding for current journals, and the stacks were already quite dated.
The only part of the library that seemed to be busy was the inter-library loan where graduate students could borrow books from a "real university" that bought new journals and books.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I really don't believe this story is true, but I do want to know, where and when will the booksale be.
I want to buy as much of their mathematics library as I can afford. Its probably hardly used much anymore anyway, as most students are likley too busy taking classes in video games and socializing (or more likely they never payed attention in high school and aren't prepared for college mathematics).
Having the *option* of using digital formats is ok, but once you eliminate books, you run a high risk of losing knowledge.
"that book isn't acceptable now" ( such as some of the classics we read back when i was in high school have now been banned from schools as 'racist' books ).
Or when the government decides its not permissible to know something " sorry that book is also inaccessible without a level 7 clearance ".
Or even the easy rewriting of history becomes possible. If you can change all the copies at once ( old copies are removed via DRMized revision systems ), then who is to have proof of how it really happened?
At least if you have a real paper book, its harder to suppress the information once it falls out of favor with the 'authorities'.
Even something as benign as honest mistakes, or dropping of 'unimportant chapters' in revisions.. who would know?
Call me paranoid, but if you were my age, you would have seen the attempted suppression of knowledge happen first hand..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I agree. I don't think I have EVER checked out a book from the UGL (the library the article is focusing on) talking about, except a few times at the librarian's counter for a required reading materials (copied and bound) for one class. The only places that have useful books are either in the PLC, the main library, and departmental library. As a side note, there are two other libraries in the adjecent buildings. The Life-Science Libraries are in the Main Building east of the UGL. The Archetecture Library is in the building south of the UGL. There are many other libraries. To lament on the passing of a building's purpose seems a bit dramatic when the UT library system re-organize themselves to better serve students.
Some background: I am currently an undergraduate in my last semester at Lehigh University.
At my school, there are two main undergraduate libraries on campus: The more liberal arts-oriented one (called Linderman) with creaking wood floors, hand-carved wood covering the walls and ceilings, and a very nice (no longer functional) fireplace inside the massive reading room; the other is the more "modern" library that has no need for a description...just picture every other "modern" library on campuses around America (called Fairmart amoung students).
Now, Fairmart has the majority of the library computers with the main concentration of such on the main floor. Every other floor has more computers. Linderman lacks computers everywhere but 9 in the main reading room. NINE in an entire library (obvious exceptions being in librarian offices).
With all this technology creeping into Fairmart, I see more and more of an interest among the student body to study in Linderman. Where there's technology, there's noise. It is virtually impossible to find a seat in Linderman during exams...even in the "haunted" basement.
I, for one, do not like this trend of technology creeping into university libraries. Even our beloved Linderman was just approved for renovations...what an uproar that caused amongst students. It seems like everyday we are losing one more quiet place where we can get away from it all and just bury our nose in a book to study.
As far as this electronic "paper" is concerned: I hope they make it as indestructible as my textbooks so I can throw them across a room when a concept doesn't make sense. Furthermore, when the switch to digital happens, what am I going to sell to other students to recoup some of the money that was gouged out of me by the bookstore? Surely, there will be some sort of DRM and they will still charge $100 for one book.
He, he, he. I hope this is your attempt of humour :-)
Really (annotated versions of codelaw):
Constitution (República Federativa do Brasil): 600 pages
Civil Code: 1200 pages
Administrative Law Compendium: 1600 pages
Representative House of MG's Regiment: 200 pages (no annotations)
Civil Law textbook: 300 pages
Constitutional Law textbook: 300 pages
Legislative Process textbooklet: 150 pages
total: 4350 pages (approximately 6.64 MiB of text)
plucker does gzip its pages, and my PalmIII had a TRG memory board (total 8MB of memory), so this may answer your parent post, too.
I loved it. Focus, hit the and let it roll (slower for codelaw, faster for textbooks...). Stop when need to consult some xref, back to start over...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
It's funny to see all the overreacting going on with this article. It's almost like people don't actually know what they're talking about, but just want to sound insightful for karma's sake. Now, if only we could get the mods to mod down all the +5 insightful comments that are completely wrong to -1 overrated, we'd be in good shape.
The great thing about not having books anymore is that book burnings become a thing of the past.
You don't need to convince anyone anymore.
With the combination of DRM and digital books, any undesirable content can just have their DRM keys revoked.
It makes it much easier to manipulate history, facts, and science.
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
Well, there goes all the hot air out of this story. Good thing you're not a /. editor, or there would be just a fraction of the hype, and posts, on this site. ;-)
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
I know this has been pointed out by a few others here, but I wanted to reiterate ONCE AGAIN for all of the slow ones out there: THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS IS KEEPING THE BOOKS! UT has twelve different libraries on campus. Twelve of them, ranging hugely in size and composition. The Undergraduate Library was, during all of the time I spent as a grad student there, a sort of literary ghetto: the building was badly laid-out, it smelled bad, and the collection left a LOT to be desired. Whenever I searched the catalog at the main library and a listing came up for something at the Undergraduate Library, my heart would sink in the horrible anticipation of having to trudge over there and deal with the lousy facilities. This conversion is the best move that UT could possibly do. Rolling the books into the other collections is going to make them MORE ACCESSIBLE, not less. So, all of you Luddite alarmists out there: chill. The books are safe. Texas is not out to take your books away. UT's is one of the best library systems in the country (my wife is a librarian at the New York Public Library, so I do have some point of reference here). Everything will be okay, I promise...
At my university it's not uncommon for retiring professors to donate large portions of their personal libraries to the campus library. The basement is full of books that have been waiting 15 years to be catalogued. Many of the books that are in circulation are anywhere from brand new to over 100 years old... many also out of print, published in another country, irreplaceable, and you can BET that no one has had either the time or the opportunity to convert these books to electronic format. These volumes would simply be lost, delegated to the basement with all the other books the university doesn't have the time to even label.
right, right, and right have you ever noticed that it's the really techy people who seem to blow a sizeable fraction of their income in bookshops?
You merely reveal your ignorance by making such a blatantly false comment. When it comes to researching the cutting edge of any scientific field, you head to the journals. Every scientific journal is now available online, with anywhere from 10 to 30 years of issues available via electronic searching. An incredibly well-stocked research library might have all of this in paper form, but a computer still wins due to ease of use and accessability. The farther you step from the edge, the more likely it is that a decent book will have been written about the subject.
The shame is that the average person does not have access to these journals. Students at UT are lucky to have free access paid for by the university, but we'll lose this when we graduate. Extremely valuable resources are available online, but you do not have access to them unless you pay a good deal or know the right people.
Several years ago Clemson University turned one of the computer labs in it's library into a Cafe, and they still kept the books in the same building.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
This won't change a whole lot... We're already at the point where nobody reads books anymore anyway. I actually think it's a smart idea, as long as they encourage online research. One thing that can be said though is that the quality of information that is available online is 10:1 junk to book-quality info. However often online information surpasses book-quality info, if you can learn to find it.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Greco
Perseus has many classic Greek works, in Greek or in translation, and has now become invaluable to young people studying Greek who do not want to check out the entire Loeb Library to do research.
I don't print anything for reading. To the contrary, I scan everything I can so whatever I want is on one slim notebook computer or a few cubic inches of 0.5TB storage.
... but truly worthwhile material (NOT relatively transient stuff printed to be read once and tossed) should be printed, bound, and shelved as long-lasting human-readable low-tech backups.
... but absolutely should retain the physical copies. One good-sized EMP and the computers will forget everything. And there's nothing like spending hours wandering the stacks, browsing thru whatever strikes you.
Moving into an apartment led me to reduce paper as much as possible. While reading paper is nicer (mostly because that's what we grew up with), I have no qualms about reading long texts online. The tradeoff favors a paperless existance.
That said, I do have about 3000 books in storage, hopefully destined for a dedicate personal library when I find a new house. Online text is great for speed and portability
The library should digitize all its books
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Isn't this the niche that a good Student Union fills?
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
dude, what are you smoking? You can't highlight,
markup, or take notes on a library book! In soviet russia, the shame is on you!
Did you try to set your contrast down or switch to green on black? If so, have you any thoughts on why it didn't help?
Libraries have information that just never made it onto the internet, or information that isn't mass market friendly enough to get sold at Barnes & Noble.
I was able to stop by the library one day and check out 5 books on speaking Korean, 1 book on how to eat Korean food, and a Korean-English dictionary. I was able to evaluate them there and decide which ones to take home. When I was finished I brought them back, there were even new ones available! Wow!
Did I only take out books on Korean? No! I also took out a book on goth kids and why they should be tolerated (hillarious), one about ADHD, one about caffeine, a book on the evolutionary psychology of rape, Silent Spring, and Siddartha. All of them I stumbled upon at random and since they were FREE, I figured why the hell not?
I never would've read all of that if I had to buy it from a bookstore, and I certainly couldn't rely on the internet to find all of the information I did (the book on eating korean food is much more informative than anything I could find on Google). But the internet did nicely complement the books I got, and vice versa.
Libraries are good for random learning sprees. You don't have to know what you want, you just wander until you find something appealing or horrific and combine with curiousity and there you are taking it home and learning something new.
I'd hate for my library to become an internet cafe. :(
Interesting that you mention Project Guttenburg.
The University of Texas has one of the few paper copies of the Guttenburg bible.
If there was ever a time when the library was the cool place to hang out, I haven't heard of it.
;). Ah, the good old days.
No, but they were always good places to make out, and for the same reason - no people (and comfortable furniture
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
That is why nothing can beat a book. No matter what story is told, the book is printed, and it will NOT change
That's why I have trouble with old books such as the bible. Before it was published in print, it was told by word of mouth. As we all know, people tend to change things with each itteration to their own likings. Plus, there was those times where pretty much only those in power and religious leaders could actually read. During those times, who's to say they didn't get changed yet again to suit those in power/religious leaders?
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
This is one more good reason to 'pirate' textbooks, 'pirate' meaning to convert the words and images on the paper to a commonly used digital format like PDF. And distribute them. For free.
By the way, are the tuition costs going to go down now that the library has been converted into a coffeehouse? Or are they going to go up in order to cover the costs of all the DRM thats going to be added to the new materials?
What passes for school is such shuck and jive. We should develop our own curricula, based on what's really important and relevant.
If there's one thing I've found out in life, learning never taught me nothing--and books is the worst.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Why buy books that keeps getting outdated and need to be thrown away?? http://www.anwesh.com/
This is the second time I've seen this story where they didn't mention the books were being moved (mainly to the much larger main library, PCL) and implied they were being eliminated. UT Austin is the flagship Texas university and the largest university in the country (world?). It has dozens of libraries including the LBJ presidential library. Books are not on the way out.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Great, but read Lawrence Lessig's book for dangers of moving books to storage where students have limited access to them. (May not be UT's case, but is the case elsewhere)
Imagine that I, as a non-resident, walk into the UT library. I can no longer grab a book off the shelf and read it if it's not there. In the future, I probably won't be able to read it online, as the publishers will probably require some proof that I'm a currently enrolled student. And I almost certainly won't be able to request it from some storage facility unless, again, I am an enrolled student.
Now, if the libraries are considering this scenario and are taking measures to prevent it, then OK. But otherwise I'm worried.
Otherwise my respect for UT @ austin will have greatly diminished.
Whats so wrong with printed books? I know Harvard is converting everything to ebook as well and will probably go the same route.
Still I use the library at almost a daily basis when I am at school. There is no other quite place to do homework and having loud annoying teenagers sipping lattes while I do my calculus does not appeal to me. Let them hang out at the lounge or a local starbucks.
http://saveie6.com/
Well, the university I attend in Iowa has had all of these things (big chairs, cafe, laptops for checkout, etc.) for YEARS... and we didn't sacrifice one book to do it. Looks like Texas is just finally catching up with everyone else at the sacrifice of education. Simply taking out the books and putting in comfy chairs doesn't "improve" a place any more than moving Dell Tech Support centers to India helps to rid that country of its economic woes. Sidestepping or leapfrogging natural steps in the development of any system, from an educational program to a national economy may be beneficial in the short-term, but in the long-term, it can only spell disaster in the form of unforseen consequences.
Online journals really are wonderful things - it's so much nicer to read a hard-copied PDF than a bunch of pages photocopied out of the books. That said, the amount of information available in online journals is still very small compared to what is available in the bound journals. I spent a good part of the last year doing research for a master's thesis, and I came out with a much deeper appreciation to just what you can find tucked away in a university library. While it may be true someday, the idea that "books are a thing of the past" ain't true yet.
I'd rather be flying
Both books had already been colored in!
I have a Rocket eBook, liked it to carry on trips and such. It was almost perfect fit, newer batteries would have made it lighter. They almost got it right for a first generation design, and technology. Of course the media critics had more negatives than good to say, and the prize restricted it to people who wouldn't instigate newness.
Then the company was bought out, by the TVGuide folks. They were scared of copyrights on old material, and they wanted to milk the content for all its worth. Result? Now more eBook. Why build a library based on closed, propietary, technology? My dead tree library will outlive me.
Political rant: my paper books will last as long as the FBI doesn't read Farenheit541 8-))
Yeah, and careful adjustments of contrast made my eyes ok for about an hour :/ The real solution was high-dose antibiotics, of course, to fix the underlying problem, but I wasn't immediately sure what that problem was, though I suspected Lyme from the outset.
-b.
I mean does Texas even HAVE books?
This article is bunk. The content, that they are making a cafe, is true. The tone, that they are getting rid of books or pushing them to the side in any way, is very, very false.
UT has one of the largest library systems in the country. The main library is 6 stories tall and takes up the better part of a square block, and there are well over a dozen satellite libraries for various disciplines.
The worst that can possibly be said is that the university is creating a social buffer zone in front of the largest collection of books. I don't see anything wrong with this at all.
This library is the one right next to the Texas Union building and has been a big meetup spot for generations. I'm surprised they even have 90 thousand books there. Now, if they started selling BEER in this library, that would be unique - Nothing to see here, move along . . .
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
True, computers in and of themselves are a wonderful information-sharing utility. I have always looked at the internet as one huge interactive library. But the medium has inherent limitations which limit it's effectiveness as a replacement for books.
Computers are great for reading instant messenger blurbs, web pages, and brief newspaper-length articles. But they simply are too clumsy to produce a 1000-page tome with footnotes, bibliography, and an index.
Gone, I fear, will be one of the chief pleasures in my life, which has been to leech college texts for free or cheap. Those of us who aren't thick enough to shell out ten thousand dollars for a piece of paper that says we passed a test and doesn't guarantee us the job we were hoping for, but do not wish to deprive ourselves of a decent education, have been scouring used book stores, flea markets, and libraries for years, educating ourselves to an equivalent of a degree. In the end, job-wise, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference, provided you aren't trying for brain surgeon or constitutional lawyer.
And I have noticed that the usual circle of college friends I make it my business to keep nearby have been drying up on the books. I get fewer and fewer every year!
The Big Brother aspect is simply that a physical paper book is harder to control. When you're finished with it, you can give it away to somebody who didn't pay the Privilege Tax. No, no, can't have that. Make them Ebooks that vanish like a soap bubble when the meter expires. Hope you remembered everything the first time, because there will be no such thing as keeping a reference source around.
The one thing the government can't control yet is the inside of your head, and this may give rise to the forgotten trade of the bard! Don't delay, folks! Become a bard! Pick the book you most want to share with the world, memorize it through your lifetime, and go forth ever after quoting it to people for free!
And let me be the first to say, that when it gets to the actual point of the Goons going around snatching books out of our hands and burning them, if by that time we have not overthrown the system in a bloody insurrection, we will deserve the government we allow ourselves to have.
Obviously, there are some downsides to real books. They take up physical space, they are difficult to reorganize, they can be more expensive than their online counterparts, they aren't searchable, etc.
But don't rule out real books. Libraries need to find a balance between the pros and cons listed above.
From a publishing standpoint, there are some additional things thrown in there-- current and popular titles will not be in electronic distribution channels anytime soon; publishers are still fretting BIG TIME about good DRM. Real books work well for publishers-- they aren't impossible to copy, but they are difficult enough, and that inconvenience is enough of a motivator to get most people to buy books instead of making copies. "Fair use" is of little concern when we're dealing with real books, since the idea was crafted when there were only real books around, but e-books are a different matter entirely. How does a library loan out a copy of an e-book to a student? It ain't gonna be free to make copies (publishers will be sure to see to that), and if it doesn't cost less than real books, what's the point!
What you're going to see in the short term are back catalogs being put out in electronic form. A publisher can't be guaranteed to make money putting out dead-tree versions of these, but in electronic form, they are extremely profitable, and there isn't much to lose. The only stumbling block here is that there is no mention of electronic distribution rights anywhere in the original contracts with the authors...
Sadly, there are a lot of us who don't like to be social. Not that we don't like to hang out with friends and have fun, but the idea of "social gathering places" is very unappealing compared to a nice quiet library with plenty of options for secluding one's self. Taking that away is yet one more way that society is trying to stamp out people who are naturally averse to socializing in groups. This is really a sad thing.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
For the record, the library featured in this story is a minor one, and hardly impacts the total book collection for UT at all. Given this context, this story is very misleading...
- UT has 17 (at last count) libraries on the Austin campus, according to specialization.
- The collection is this particular library is generalized and shallow, with only a small fraction of each floor dedicated to the book collection.
- The building is 4-5 floors (can't remember for sure). The bottom floor is computer labs, offices and a lecture hall and the top floor is a meeting space not connected to the library.
- This library is only about 75 yards from the Student Union on an already over-crowded campus.
- The library faces the main concourse for public demonsrations on campus - the West Mall.
In other words, the student body has has been using this building for social gathering for the last 15 years at least, and it seems like UT is finally given up on it's token designation of the building on the campus map.
UT has a long and continuing dedication to the printed word, that I used extensively in my undergradute studies in History. The collection goes far beyond the texts of the major publishing houses to include one-of-a-kind volumes both old and new that can only be accessed on campus or via inter-library loan.
The UT libraries house the the nation's fifth largest academic library, containing over 8 million volumes. They aren't going anywhere, trust me.
The reason people do research online rather than in the library isn't because it's easier or more pleasant, it's because they DON'T HAVE TO GO TO THE DAMN LIBRARY.
I'd rather read the actual book, but if I can read a crappy, awkward PDF instead, i'll do it if I don't have to get out of my chair.
In the future, class distinction will be made apparent by which technologies you have for personal use - digital or analog.
Since digital is so, so cheap, and getting cheaper, the lower socio-economic classes will have an abundance of digital technologies in their lives - digital music, digital movies, DVRs, digital books, etc., and news of the world from broadband content-providers/distributers.
The upper classes will have a plethora of analog technologies - turntables, video-tape, audio-tape, books, and access to better quality news sources.
Analog, at the high-end, is more robust, more stable, and more humanistic. Digital is easily corruptable, unstable, and very artificial.
But this is mostly about money and quality. Wal-Mart will be able to sell you the Encyclopaedia Britannica on digital media for about 5 bucks, but a book on American Literature, not pre-approved by Lynne Cheney, will cost in the hundreds.
It is also about access and freedom. The poorer classes will have to use digital media for most of their transactions - paying bills, getting news, getting an education. The richer class will be able to use other media - written texts, private tutors - which will allow them to remain less "plugged in" to the information systems.
You can see it already in the employment sector. To apply for a job at Target, for instance, one must use an online system, answer inane, insulting questions of a personal nature, and submit to a drug test. To apply for an executive-level position, one meets personally with their peers, submits to no drug tests, and absolutely does not have to answer inane, insulting personal questions to an online database.
The future is digital - for the masses. The elite will use digital for their own ends, while the lower classes will have to adapt their lives to a digital world.
It's just the UGL. We've got half a dozen libraries on campus. Anybody who wants anything serious goes to the PCL anyway, except for us engineering geeks who go to the ECJ (engineering) or RLM (math) libraries. I was going to say there are half a dozen libraries at UT, but there are way more than that:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/help/librarylist.html
It sounds like fun to me.
"but I still prefer a good book to staring at my retina-burning CRT monitor"
good point, they better have decent monitors, not the cheap Dell LCDs going at barely 60Hz and after a while the text looks like a big blur.
I noticed this when my school got it's annual 1/3 replacement/upgrade from its Dell contract. The monitors went from a nice 17" flat CRT at 85Hz+ to cheap 17" LCD at 60Hz. The screens are clean so I knoe it's not dirt, it seems like it takes more effort to focus on the screen after an hour or two. Yes, that will also happen with a book, but usually because you're starting to get tired/bored after 5 or 6hrs and want to do something else.
I like books and I like electronics, I am reading Slashdot. I'm yet a find a reasonably priced display device as versitile as a book, try in a bus/train laying in bed or sitting back in a nice reclining chair and reading a few dozen pages of electronic text. A laptop needs too awkward a position to get that ideal angle and heats up sensitive areas after a little while. You could try moving the chair near a large monitor and increase the font or zoom in and use a wireless keyboard or mouse, that only works a home where you can freely move the furnature. A PDA works, but the screen size is too small, seeems like I'm scrooling down more than reading. A 10-12" tablet or laptop with rotating display seems like it would work, but they're 2-3k, a little on the expensive side for college students. An ebook reader has limited uses and are a few hundred for one with a decent display, if it can open anything other DRMed proprietary format it was decigned for. Let me know when the PADD gets invented, then I'll think about it.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
They removed almost all of the books, relaxed the food and drink policy (maybe due to their financial interest the coffee kiosk next door?) and threw open what used to be controlled access doors at Meyer Library at Stanford... in 2000. A glorified computer lab doesn't warrant so much attention in 2005.
Welcome to the big blank space in history. With all research, creative writing, and personal journals being produced and distributed digitally in a thousand years all that information will be lost. It'll be one big empty spot in future history ebooks. Everything future historians will learn about us will come out of landfills.
I have to think that there are many books (and therefore a great amount of information) that is simply not available in any format besides a book. I remember doing research at the University of Minnesota using rare books from the late 1800s and current but obscure journals. If all of this is freely available in a PC format ("online" or however), then I'd be very surprised.
And to effectively censor information because of format seems particularly foolish.
for those of you who wanted to know this is the undergraduate library they are talking about, its in the FAC building, although there will be so many computers good luck finding an open one,
My University is proceeding with ambitious plans to purchase some hugh multimillion dollar robot. Initially, rare and infrequently circulated books will be housed in this contraption and students will lose the ability to peruse the stacks of books contained in the beast. I've located numerous articles and sources by readings books and journals adjacent to my original destination. What a loss when we can't touch the books. I'm sure many SlashDot readers recall the Star Trek episode "Court Martial" where Kirk's attorney insists on using law books -- gasp -- instead of the computer database.
signature pending slashdot approval
Paper is one of the most important aspects of our civilized culture- it provides a physical record of our literature and knowledge. It seems to me that if you can't verify something physically (which will become increasingly difficult as this trend continues), how do you know what is true or accurate? Eventually, truth and accuracy will be embodied in what anyone says is true or accurate, and this can be carefully crafted, monitored, and even changed by those in control.
If you think this is far-fetched, read this. It's a damning review of the 2004 presidential election. My only reason for pointing this out is to provide an example as to how completely messed up things can become without the ability to revert to some form of physical (i.e. paper) reference.
If you are a major university, you will still need to subscrive to all the latest technical/scientific journals and books if you want to be a relevent university.
If they have stopped buying printed books, I can not see how they expect to stay current in tech, medical, biotech, material scences, math, physics, chem etc.
I would like to see how the various departments at a good university respond to a "paperless libray" given that with todays state of the art in pc laptop displays is not at a decent level of "future plastic paper displays" that require next to nothing in the way of power, mabey in 25 years from now, we won't need paper-based libraries, but not now, its way to early to make any sense.
in encouraging the socialites to migrate from the quiet libraries and into a huge "study hall" where talking is more acceptable. That way the engineers and other serious students can actually study in peace (and away from those awkward social situations)
That way, the real libraries can be more of what people expect from a library. It's not like the other libraries don't have wifi, ethernet, and power outlets.
The only thing that is different is the UGL loses the books that people didn't go there to read in the first place.
....they're hittin the books
Why can't you have both? Books AND a digital atmosphere. What if your computer crashes? What if there's a power failure? That's why books are a necessary back up to technology. Can't always rely on it, can we?
AKA, How can we make money with these damn libraries? They cost a fortune and nobody uses them for anything but, ick, study.
At Cornell, two of the largest library buildings (there are about a dozen throughout the campus) are Uris Library and Olin Library, and they are located directly across from each other.
Uris, the one with the clocktower, is kind of an all-purpose library. There are reference, fiction, nonfiction, periodicals despartments, yes, but there are also grand rooms full of study carrels, computer labs, cooperative work rooms, lounges, etc. It is a place to go to study.
Olin, in contrast, is a place to go to get books, and little else. There are few amenities, just shelf after shelf, row after row, floor after floor of books. In the basement they even have motorized stacks so more books can be fit in the space without the nuisance of having to leave space for humans in between each row.
Libraries can be places for books AND/OR places for people. I see no problem with facilities specializing in catering towards one or the other, as long as both are ultimately still available.
There used to be a bar (on North High St.) near OSU called "The Library". That way undergrads could tell their folks - "I spent most of the evening at The Library last night".
[Insert pithy quote here]
As far as I know, one library here in Finland lends cabel modems for two weeks per lender. But it's just a small test, if i remember right they only have 20 modems. But the feedback has been positive :)
And of course this is good advertisement for the company that provides the free internet service. A way for people to test the internet services at home, and get hooked...
why have books when you can just have the distracting power of solitaire and the internet in front of you? Plus, the internet always has great ads, where books usually don't try and sell you things. How am I expected to be a proper consumer when I am wasting my time NOT being fed ads? [insert obligatory comment about Texas education here]
Despite the Starbucks on every street corner, let's get rid of the books and turn the library into a coffeshop.
I like libraries but for me one of their main purposes from day to day is as a quiet place to study. Sure, it's nice to obtain books on loan or from reserve, but that's an occasional thing. Perhaps someone might get 10-15 books out while working on a term paper, and a graduate student writing a thesis might make more extensive use of the collections, but for the average, in-the-trenches day to day studying, a library is a wonderful place to just sit and pore over a textbook, work through a problem set or do some writing.
Now, this coffeehouse/cyber cafe idea sounds fine, but will it give the students space in which to do real work, or will it just be another Student Union recreational facility> My university has lots of computer terminals around the libraries and I see an awful lot of people doing IM, email, playing remote games, or checking sports scores. A big time waster, in other words.
Also, don't most students have a desktop, if not a laptop or wireless-enabled handtop these days? I would think that the pressing need is not a "social" computing space but rather a quiet space that has late hours so that people can get real work done either on paper or using their laptop. During crunch time, there's nothing like a 24-hour library that's quiet, has lots of study carrols plus many small rooms with blackboards for study groups. And ample trash cans for all the munchie wrappers!!!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Honestly, making out between the bookshelves in the half-floors of the humanities library was one of the highlights of my University days.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
This is as close to sacrilege as a secular institution can get. (Leaving all jabs about Texas aside for the moment.) Much has been made of the argument that e-books are easier to store and to search through, but paper-based texts are more pleasant and efficient to handle. Those are important arguments when you have both formats available, but the most critical issue is the amount of information not available at all in digital format. It's not just "the classics" that would have to be digitized in order for this to be an acceptable move. They would have to convert every title in existence to an e-book. I'm a double major in a humanities subject (Spanish) and in information science. I am intimately acquainted with the research content available at my school, which has one of the best libraries in the nation. Despite the huge number of online journals and research services we subscribe to, I have often found books to be the most authoritative and complete sources, especially when researching in the humanities. With the digital content base, not only are there thousands of services that a library has to subscribe to (each using their own metadata and query system - attempts to unify them, such as InfoTrac, inevitably miss some sources) but one frequently gets a citation to something the library doesn't have full-text access to. Then it's an exciting romp through a variety of channels to get the article. Often, the citation leads to something that's never been digitized - you must find the paper copy, no matter how sophisticated the digital search was. If you think this isn't relevant to more technical works... well, the best example I have is from trying to find an article in the Proceedings of the 12th National Conference on Computer Security. CiteSeer had only the abstract at the time. Between me and three reference librarians, I ultimately had to get the print edition through inter-library loan.
Once you are at a higher level of studies such as Masters or PhD, you will find that you are primarily reading research journals. Most fields have 'seminal' papers that establish the current paradigms. Subsequent papers build on those. Most of these for most fields were written before 1995. Most of them are not on-line in full text.
To a certain extent the internet has spawned laziness in referencing, as many students simply only reference articles that they can pull up on-line. If it involves a trip to the stacks, forget it. They'll just assume that issue or reference has been settled and not bother to check or read the original reference underlying most articles. It is as if everything before the internet doesn't exist in their world of research.
Filmo The Klown
The kind of library that president shrub would be at home in. I hope they have at least one book about a goat.
If you plan on studying science or engineering, consider that when you do your "state of the art" survey, you will probably have to hit the stacks to get all of the papers that were written before the computer even existed. The newest, and likely most relevant papers will be available through electronic journals, and probably also on the shelves.
I found that through graduate school (6 years), I rarely went to the library for texts; journals tend to be the primary source of relevant info. Texts, at least in science and engineering, are typically just condensations of groundbreaking or standard-establishing papers into easily digestible chunks. At the coursework level, there is usually a prescribed book for each course that coveres the basics. (The one at the bookstore.)
When I did grab a book from the library, it was usually to look for references to the original papers, or to get a different perspective on the subject matter-- same physics, just filtered through a different author. What would really be fantastic would be to be able to have a number of authors' explanations of the same material available in one convenient location. And it looks like this would be a better way of doing that.
Reality is what you DIRECTLY experience. You use all available information as a guide/influence to pique your curiosity, but your ideas, facts, and conclusions, are based on what you see for yourself and not what is fed to you by an imaginary authority.
Answer me this; what sources, of a non-scientific nature, can you trust with a high degree confidence?
The dictionary comes to mind, but I can't think of any other.
First, they aren't throwing out the books. It's a big system, they are sending them to other libraries.
Second, oh, man is this a big mistake. If you really could access interesting things from your laptop, maybe it would work. It's only hype for now. One example, the Cambridge Ancient History. Just about anyone who is even halfway serious about the study of ancient history will need to consult this multivolume work. Very important stuff, academically (it was written around seventy years ago). Is it anywhere on the Internet? Nope. Google lists plenty of places to buy it, but no digitized copies anywhere. Project Gutenberg doesn't have it.
Maybe business majors don't need it. Okay, I'll bite. Most university libraries have collections of old quarterly statements, advertising, IPO offerings, you name it. Some of these collections go all the way back to ancient times, the 1970s (a joke, there are collections of this stuff running all the way back to the early nineteenth century). None of that is on the Internet.
How many scientific research journals from the last century are on the net now? Not many, I suppose. Breakthroughs from cause of Mad Cow Disease to more effective gambling strategies have come in part from researchers browsing through old back issues.
The current state of the Internet reminds me of a joke William Gibson told me once, years ago, back in the primal ages, when I interviewed him for a local public radio program. I complimented him on the depth of the world he created in Neuromancer and Count Zero. He laughed. "It's miles wide," he said, "but only a molecule deep."
> Give me one reason why I need a physical book to access text that I can more efficiently read from my PDA or my laptop?
/. is harder and harder to post to. On a fun note, the 'captcha' word was "adequacy". Mmm. Reminded me of adequacy.org *This* as something great.
I am going home right now. It is a 1 hour walk, I like that. I have a book with me (John Varley''s Persistence of Vision).
The sun is bright. This walk is going to be a pleasure. I hardly can read my PDA in sunlight.
"It's been 15 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment" -- fuck you, slashdot, I'm going home... now back from home, posting:
"Invalid form key: Wx7LaPO4fO"
I think reading 500 page books is as old fashioned as printing out websites. Using type writers, and typing papers without a spellchecker. I rarely ever read 500 page books because 99% of the time no book is worthy of 500 pages of my attention. A book might have 100 good pages of information I never knew about, the rest is useless information I already know. It's about reading the important pages not reading a lot of pages.
I read pages not books. This means I'll go from book to book reading important pages from dozens of books at a time, and usually I never read every page of any book, I just read enough to extract the information I need to extract. The unimportant stuff I leave behind. I do not care about the biography of the author, I do not care about all the pointless information, I just want the main idea. Usually you learn in school to get the main idea from the book and move on, there is never enough time to read a book from cover and cover and if I did spend all my time doing that then theres no time for a social life, so either be a book worm and have no friends but your books, or go outside and talk to people.
Not wanting to read 500 pages is just time efficient, pure and simple.
You assume everyone cares about their own individual happiness. Some of us work for our families, some of us work for our community, our country and our world. Personal happiness is an afterthought, its not something you work for, its something people give you or not and money, hard work, and focus will not change the nature of it.
So why work hard? Because you want to accomplish alot, and in order to do this you might have to sacrifice alot. Usually in university you learn how to sacrifice your personal happiness for your degree, your education, your career, etc. It's very rare for a working class individual in America to spend their life looking at artwork. Yes it would be great to have as much free time as possible, but lets be real, if you arent born rich you'll never have the money to afford the free time. Time is expensive, and too much free time can cost you your life if you don't invest your time wisely.
Wealthy people may be losers, its not wealth that matters, its why you work and what you do with your wealth that matters.
So to sum up everything I said, I'd rather survive for a long period of time than be happy for a short period of time.
Everyone in America who eats the American diet will get an ulcer if not a heart attack. The people with jobs will have healthcare, everyone else will die. So once again all that matters is getting as many degrees as you can get. I understand creativity, and it can be expressed through your work. You do not have to read novels to gain creative insight if you naturally have creativity to begin with. Once again, we are in a global economy now, and those who do not get their masters degres and PHds will die. There simply will not be any jobs for anyone with less than a masters degree. Creativity is good, but creativity is no replacement for a proper education. If we lived in a world where minds were judged fairly and not on how many degrees they have then perhaps we wouldnt have to focus so much on learning "required" knowledge and we could focus more on entertainment and creativity, but if you want a world like this go out and create it. We do not currently live in that world.