Posted on 06/11/2006 8:07:04 PM PDT by SamAdams76
the encyclopedia in most libraries are a couple years old even if they are "new"...at least on line they are up to date.
And for research, it is much easier on line.
For medical information, textbooks have to be replaced every three years. It used to be I would have to go to my academy and ask them to find articles on some subject, then wait two to three weeks. Now I google Grateful Med and voila, I have a summary and often can get the entire article on line.
nah this was supplemental stuff i wanted her to learn. acceptable?
Time and Newsweak are also still commonly found in school libraries despite their obvious flaws.
I was in an elevator with the guy wearing it and told him it was awesome....and I never comment on peoples ties.
He said he gets comments on it all day, every day he wears it.......but only from people over 30. People younger than 30 don't get it.
Searches I've done that have turned up nothing:
You get the idea.
I'd probably get a lot more excited about "libraries" if the Library of Congress was online. Set up a downloadable "check out" system and put every book in or out of print online for a small fee. Enough to pay the author a royalty and for upkeep/upgrade of the system. Make it available worldwide.
Yes, there would be issue with hackers, ect... There always will be. Better to have too much access to information than too little.
lol...there ya go. That tie is awsome.
Their primary value seems to be as places for hoary old Leftists to hold "Kucinich 2008" coffees. ;)
But yeah, my town wants to spend 50 million dollars to build a new one, when they could deliver more value to the community by leasing a nice big office suite and filling it with Intel iMacs for less than a tenth of the cost.
Yes, the reference sections may be empty but the computers for public use are ALL in use - organized by time limits, sign-up sheets and access cards to keep the kids off of porn sites.
Just like Brittanica. ;) Leftist opinion found its way into everything a long time ago - the Internet just allows you to get to it faster.
I liked P.J. O'Rourke's statement that he owns a 1919 edition of Britannica and that it is the only reference he really trusts.
btw i apologize for my tone in previous post, you had already noted your comment was busybody.
One added-value librarians still have is teaching trustworthy sites; depending on how you're using it, I would not recommend Wikipedia as the be-all and end-all source of information. Good for organizational purposes, but the information can be very questionable at times.
My husband found one of those in our house and took it in to the office one day. Some of his younger co-workers had no idea what it was.
"There is no reason to have a tax-funded 'library' these days unless to archive and preserve old books out of print."
Well, yes, there is. Many public libraries have extensive databases that are available to the public through the library's subscription. Enterprise licenses to digital material serves the entire community far more efficiently than individual books ever did - but they can be expensive, so taxpayer funding would still be needed for these resources, which you can access more easily than ever.
I don't think your analogy is quite right. Yes, ice delivery gave way to electric refrigeration. The need for refrigeration was the constant, however; the format simply changed.
The need for organized, easily-accessed information is the constant, and is so overwhelming there is a need to address it at an organizational rather than individual level. Libraries will evolve, and are evolving, into something we don't recognize from years ago, but will continue to serve the information imperative.
Electronic searching is far less forgiving than "browsing through the cards" searching used to be, because you have to know how to spell the words correctly to get results. Try "metallurgy". :)
loc.gov is online, so you can see what books are available, but of course copyright prevents making full text available. There are many services, such as Gutenberg, which make full text of OP books available.
Research projects are never going to be the same.
Thank God. I shutter to think of the millions of hours that I spent looking things up that now could be done in two seconds. I am glad that libraries are faltering. I hope they run out of business. They just suck up tax money. It is time to close all of them down. I think with Barnes and Noble and Google, libaries are done.
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