“Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman
Monday, July 5, 2010
Ban Libraries?
FOX news floated the idea of getting rid of libraries: here is a beautiful post--a piece of poetry, imho--on the value of libraries: http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2010/02/twelve-theses-on-libraries-and.html.
There are a lot of problems with the digital age. My husband's university library switched to digital subscriptions of many important scholarly journals a few years ago. Part of the "plus" of the digital subscription was access to the digital archives of the journals, so they put all their paper archives into recycling to save shelf space. Then, when the economy tanked, they canceled many of these subscriptions. Now guess what? No archives. Of course, they are happy to get a copy of something for a scholar from interlibrary loan, but what if all libraries get rid of the paper and go digital? Say a journal closes shop? It might vanish altogether.
In general, there is much greater opportunity for censorship and control, as well as loss, when we go all digital. Rosemary
3 comments:
That is just incredible. Crazy. Libraries are one of the pillars of educated citizenship in this country and have been since the days of Ben Franklin.
I am with you!
There are a lot of problems with the digital age. My husband's university library switched to digital subscriptions of many important scholarly journals a few years ago. Part of the "plus" of the digital subscription was access to the digital archives of the journals, so they put all their paper archives into recycling to save shelf space. Then, when the economy tanked, they canceled many of these subscriptions. Now guess what? No archives. Of course, they are happy to get a copy of something for a scholar from interlibrary loan, but what if all libraries get rid of the paper and go digital? Say a journal closes shop? It might vanish altogether.
In general, there is much greater opportunity for censorship and control, as well as loss, when we go all digital.
Rosemary
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