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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."
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.
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).
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.
So... a book that's too old and fragile to be scanned, you're going to put in a library where the general public (relatively speaking) have unsupervised access?
If anything, it IS the old and fragile books that most desperately need to be digitized to be preserved and given a wider audience.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
Plus, books don't run out of electricity.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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?
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
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 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?
They're different brands of information. Yes, the internet is slowly absorbing it all. Yes, there's a lot of stuff there.
But it's easy to think you have all the information because there's a whole lot of stuff out there on the web and you don't, by definition, see what's missing. Don't be so quick to totally dismiss the last three hundred years of work at writing things down. Just because they didn't have the internet doesn't mean they weren't just as smart -- and often awful smarter -- than us. Presentism is a dangerous thing.
Yes, eventually everything will be web-accessable. Yes, libraries will become obsolete. But there is a tre-MENDOUS amount of material not yet there. And much more importantly, information often isn't available online with the context, the background, the solidity, and the completeness of a long book by a single author who's an expert on the subject, a book vetted by peers. And the relative permanence of books allows them to be double and triple-checked for accuracy and relevence. When I want to learn a subject (computer-related fields are sort of an exception here), I may look at websites to get an overview, but mostly I look for recommended books on the subject.
There's a whole lot more to transferring information than simply dumping facts in a pile, and books are a wonderful tool for organizing them. They are guarenteed to have voice, coherence, grammatical standards, and the promise that someone has spent significant time and work putting the information together.
This will all change eventually. But it hasn't near changed yet.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
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.
For me, it's more about how to access what I want to read.
I think the UI would be inferior mainly because flipping through pages with my fingers will always be more convenient than a search box (that needs either a stylus or keyboard to work) or previous/next buttons that go one page at a time.
A bookmarks UI will either need screen space or an extra step to access, as opposed to just grabbing and flipping the pages. Have you ever held your fingers between pages at a few spots in a book and flipped back and forth?
How about comparing/referenceing multiple pages from the same or multiple books?
Also, it's always nice to have a feel for where you are in a book, and I don't think a picture or number can convey that as well as physical pages.
Sure, it would be nice to have a thin letter sized tablet to carry on the subway for reading, and I think it would certainly add some useful features (automatic updating of news, searching and highlighting, etc), but I can think of many situations where I would be more comfortable with real books.
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 am a phd student (machine learning if you must know), and I have to disagree with you here. While the net (citeseer, IEEEtrans, google scholar etc.) is ideal for reading up on the latest research in the field, if I want to review a subject in depth I find the easiest, most efficient, fastest way is (usually) to find a few good books, spread them across the desk (along with a stack of blank paper) and start reading + taking notes. Besides, I *like* wandering through the library looking for books - there's something very calming about the smell of old books and the quiet of the library that puts me in the mood for study. Whereas searching through irrelevant junk and dead links on the net just makes me feel frustrated. As for trying to do that in a noisy cafe type environment filled with other distractions (not to mention the unpleasant smell of coffee)... *shudder*.
So how many people here find something interesting on the web, then print it out to read it if it is more than a few pages?
How many of these students will print out reams of paper that they would not have done if they had the book infront of them?
I'm just here to regulate Funkyness
It's easier to rewrite history when there are no books. It all happened just like in the Hollywood movies, right?
Man, and you thought Americans were undereducated and brainwashed before, wait till this takes off!
And it's starting in Texas, how poetic.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I finished my degree while taking public transit to work. I read one book at a time and took notes of what I needed to cross-reference when I got home.
Paper I think is just a holdover from generations who have learned from paper. It's still superior in many ways than electronic text. Those who are used to paper are used to learning without being able to instantly cross-reference an enormous library, but are used to no compromises in the quality of the print and where they choose to read.
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
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.
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