Subject:
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Libraries (was Re: Bad news for TRU)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 29 Jan 2002 16:25:15 GMT
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Viewed:
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418 times
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Gosh. From the rant below, you must be almost as old as me. You didn't
mention one other feature of the "cybrary" model -- that there are seldom
enough computers or terminals to accomodate the same number of researchers
as the old books. When the main research library of the New York Public
Library replaced its card catalog (ooh... do I need to explain to our
readers what a "card catalog" is?) which occupied a very large room, it first
did so with four (4) terminals. Imagine the fun when all the people who
used to be scattered all over the room looking into different drawers began
to queue up!
(Message snipped to library rant)
> I dunno how much time you spend in modern libraries, but from the sound of it,
> I think TRUs are just catching up with the modern library. The modern library
> consists of lots of curvy-shaped tables with PCs everywhere with a few
> carousels of books dotted here and there, some bean bags, and a big rug for
> story-telling time. That's the way it is at most community libraries.
>
> [start ranting]
>
> Here at the university (with all the heavy-duty thinking that supposedly goes
> on), we have several large multi-storey libraries, but even so, you have to
> travel to the upper reaches of the ionosphere to actually encounter the
> traditional book stacks. Most books are being carted off to warehouses where
> they can be retrieved at enormous inconvenience should some luddite library
> user actually want one. The modern library user apparently prefers to use the
> WWW or the CD-ROM databases in preference to books. We have groups of comfy
> chairs, and some of them are curvy too, because our libraries must be hip and
> funky if we expect undergraduates to visit them. It's clearly successful as
> our libraries are awash with undergraduates surfing the WWW. I never realised
> how many of them needed to study movies, motorcycles etc as part of their
> degree, but I guess our degrees are probably more funky these days too
> (Bachelor of Commerce with double major in Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance). As
> far as I know, we have yet to install any story-telling rugs, but with the
> constant dumbing-down of undergraduate degrees, I guess it's just a matter of
> time. "Now, today, children, we are going to read a story about Cissy the C
> Programmer and how she found Peter Program's memory leak."
>
> Indeed, if you inspect our library WWW site http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ you
> will see that we don't call it a library anymore; we call it a "cybrary"
> instead and if you look in the FAQ, you will see "book" mentioned only once
> but lots of mentions of computers, email, and Internet access.
>
> [end ranting]
>
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bad news for TRU
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| (...) I dunno how much time you spend in modern libraries, but from the sound of it, I think TRUs are just catching up with the modern library. The modern library consists of lots of curvy-shaped tables with PCs everywhere with a few carousels of (...) (22 years ago, 29-Jan-02, to lugnet.market.shopping, lugnet.loc.au)
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