Subject:
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Re: Modern Libraries
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:01:32 GMT
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Viewed:
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647 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Paul Ferguson writes:
> In lugnet.market.shopping, Scott Arthur writes:
>
> (snip of message which led to Scott Arthur's response)
>
> > As a heavy user, the modern library is where it is at. I can now usually
> > download obscure journal papers in seconds rather than waiting a couple of
> > weeks for hard copies to appear (usually it would be a "dud", or I had moved
> > on since then.) I can check to see if a book is on the shelf or reserve it
> > from my desk. If it is on the shelf, I can often find a review of it before
> > I lumber up to the library to get it.
> >
> > That said, I still request books heavily. If your library does not have a
> > book you want (or it is only on CD) - make a request!
>
> My experience is that all of this is PARTLY true. On the good side,
> as Scott suggests, you can often get articles from journals which wouldn't
> otherwise be easily available, with an important limitation -- THEY HAVE TO BE
> RECENT ARTICLES. Nobody is going back, so far as I know, to digitize the vast
> amount of journals issued, say, before 1990. Now this is probably not a
> problem if you're working in the natural sciences, medicine, computer science,
> or the like. On the other hand, if you're really a medieval historian, like
> me, you still need journals from 100+ years ago, and you're going to have to do
> it the old-fashioned way. Go to a library that has them and get them off the
> shelf. Here's where Kerry's complaint comes in. Nowadays they're probably in
> dead storage in a "remote location," so as to make more room in the library for
> newfangled technology stuff, so you'll need to fill out a request, and wait
> several days for someone to go there, pull the book off the shelf, and drag it
> back.
Paul--you may wish to check JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org if memory serves)
for older articles. Your library needs to be a subscriber, and they should
have a connection through their Library homepage. There are fewer journals
than you'll find in ProQuest, but those that are covered are digitized for
their entire runs (including some back into the 20s and 30s or earlier).
Of course, if your library isn't a subscriber (and most medium to large
universities are), then you may have more difficulty. But otherwise,
between ProQuest and JSTOR, you may find a big percentage of your journals
archived in .pdf format.
> Back to the first hand, however, computer catalogs make it a whole lot easier
> to find out what libary to go to in the first place, sometimes. But keep in
> mind that many major institutions still haven't put their older holdings on
> line. My own old grad school library, with multiple millions of volumes, only
> had stuff electronically cataloged for items added since about 1980. If it
> came into the collection before that, it was in the card catalog, but not
> online. Consequently, many of our more "newbie" students, unused to the card
> catalog, kept thinking that things just weren't in the collection when, if
> fact, they were. So the advice of this old dog is to be sure to check with the
> reference people to find out what portion of any library's collection is
> actually listed in the on-line catalog.
Princeton still has this problem; a few other major libraries as well.
Rutgers, however, is fully catalogued, in part because they had to do
a lot of it when they unified administratively in the 1980s. I don't
know, a part of me doesn't think it's awful to have to go to the card
catalogue; it means that some older material isn't being abused. But
that's my own academic elitism showing. :D
> Oh, yeah, and when libraries do go back to put thier old card catalogs online,
> they often seem to hire outfits to do it that are cheap for a reason. The
> result is data entry by low-paid, unmotivated people that leads to (actual
> real-world example) stuff like the titles at the University of Pennsylvania
> which contain the word "Carolingian" but which were (last I looked) mistyped
> into the online catalog as "Garlovingian." Needless to say, searches on the
> real title brought up the ever-popular "no entries found" result.
Ack. I've encountered a few of those issues--confused LoC subject
allocations, mistyped authors or titles, et cetera. I use the "blast
radius" method--I find a few related books, and go to the section in
question. Usually within a few shelves there's something wonderful
hiding.
> A good side has been the ease of interlibrary loan arrangements. Here in
> Ohio, where I live now , I can use to system to request most books from
> libraries all over the state, check on line for their arrival, and pick them up
> at my local university library about 3 days after the request. This wasn't
> remotely possible when I was in grad school during the bronze age of personal
> computers. (Anybody else out there remember CP/M?)
Oi. Heh. This is one thing that I absolutely love about being in
the Northeast Corridor--Columbia, Princeton, and Penn are all nearby,
and Chicago, U-M, and OSU are all common interlibrary loan partners.
But unfortunately it's still like pulling teeth for me to get into
Yale's libraries, and I can't even dream of wandering into Widener--
so some things are still unfortunately off limits. :(
Interesting note, though (and maybe you can offer comparative data)--
MSU and U-M had no "ID-sensitive" gates; but all the Unis here on the
East Coast do. Especially the Ivies. I remember being able just to
walk into the U-M grad library; no such luck at Columbia or Penn
(though I can get a temporary pass during normal office hours).
Is it a geography thing, or a public/private thing (odd since Penn is
technically public)?
best
LFB
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Modern Libraries (was Re: Bad news for TRU)
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| In lugnet.market.shopping, Scott Arthur writes: (snip of message which led to Scott Arthur's response) (...) My experience is that all of this is PARTLY true. On the good side, as Scott suggests, you can often get articles from journals which (...) (23 years ago, 30-Jan-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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