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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.
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."
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.
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 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.
Plus, books don't run out of electricity.
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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?
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.
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
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
They are already way ahead of you. Check out http://www.thomsonisi.com/, an index of most of the the major peer reviewed journals (or at least those that provide english abstracts). You can use it as a keyword index, but the real kicker is being able to find every paper that cited a given paper. It sure beats flipping through its predecessor, the old Science Citation Index.
To get access to it you'll have to have an account at an academic library though.
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.
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]
I am a university researcher, and I do use Google Scholar and Citeseer almost exclusively. The university is subscribed to almost everything out there, and I only rarely need something that is not available through the web. It depends on the field you are in, of course; I rarely need something more than 10 years old.
And what do many powerplants burn to make electricity? Oil. When we run out of oil we'll have power shortages unless it's prepared for.
That's okay... when we run out of oil, just think of all the books we'll have available to burn.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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!
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
I like my books, I like hiding and having fun in the isles , don't take away my fun plllease.
:-)
You should try the aisle with the dictionaries in - it's a blast
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
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
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
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
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.
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 Of course, the nice thing about libraries is that they have librarians, who are there to help you find the information you need. At least, libraries should have librarians. Some have part-time undergrads, which is not the same thing AT ALL. So when universities skimp on the librarians, you suffer.
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?