Posted on 06/11/2006 8:07:04 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Last year children's librarian Debby At- well put a new set of encyclopedias on the shelf at Thomaston Public Library.
A year later, it has yet to be touched.
"I have never seen an encyclopedia lifted from the stacks," Atwell said.
Librarians across the state report the millennials, the generation born roughly between 1980 and 2000, are not using libraries the way past generations did.
Reference materials are gathering dust on the shelves of libraries everywhere. Reference librarians are being reassigned to other tasks, and library directors are pondering the future role of the traditional lending library. The trend has sparked an angst-filled discussion for the past several weeks among librarians online.
It's a topic some librarians are reluctant to talk about for fear taxpayers will cut their budgets if word gets out that some of their traditional functions are being usurped. They blame the trend on the rise of online databases and search engines such as Google, a shift away from a print to a visual culture, and even on state and national learning standards that leave little time for school research projects requiring multiple sources of information. Whatever the cause, said some librarians, libraries must learn to adapt.
"Librarians need to be wildly outside the box so we can create new ways to connect to people and connect people to literature or else we are going to fade," said Marian Peterson, director of the South Portland Public Library.
Signs of the shift in how people seek information are everywhere. At Portland Public Library, for example, the number of visitors rose by about 25 percent between 2001 and 2005, but the number of reference questions declined by about 6 percent.
Library use is changing for all age groups. At Scarborough Public Library Catherine Morrison was hired eight years ago with the title of "reference librarian." Now that position has been renamed "adult services librarian" and instead of answering questions and pointing people to printed reference materials she spends much of her time helping them access Internet sources.
"Last week I spent hours helping people sign up for e-mail accounts," she said.
Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit computer library service and research organization, concluded that American college students and teenagers are using libraries and gathering information in vastly different ways than past generations. Among the report's findings:
Eighty-nine percent of college students begin an information search with a search engine; only 2 percent begin on a library Internet site.
Ninety-three percent were satisfied or very satisfied with using a search engine compared with 84 percent who use the help of a librarian.
The most frequent use of libraries by college students is as a place to study.
Ellsworth High School librarian Candice Macbeth said the trend is neither positive nor negative but a "sea change" from the past. She said it was particularly apparent in this year's freshman class.
"A book is their last choice" as a source of information, she said.
She said students will turn to an actual book for a research project only when a teacher requires it, and even then they often do not really use the book but simply list it in their bibliographies. She said today's students do not have the same appreciation for books as past generations. They actually prefer paperbacks to hardcovers, traditionally considered superior to the pulps.
"Books are too slow, too heavy, and they are already carrying around a lot of stuff," she said.
Sarah Muzzy, a junior at Portland's Deering High School, agreed. "The hard ones get in the way when you are trying to read," said Muzzy.
Muzzy said she never uses the public library and avoids the school library when she can. "The way it is set up, it is really hard to go in there. They are picky. You have to get a pass. It is a very complicated process," she said.
She said she finds information she needs for school research projects either with an online search engine or by using the school library's online databases.
Some librarians dismiss the gloomy predictions.
"We are very excited about the fact that students have access to many things," said Judy Montgomery, associate librarian at Bowdoin College. She said thanks to the Internet her library is able to offer students access to 150 databases and 22,000 electronic journals. She said students make heavy use of the reference materials but unlike past generations want personal control of their research.
"They want to find their own way," she said.
Still, she said, the reference desk continues to try to lure students. This year it started offering instant messaging in addition to answering questions by phone, e-mail or in person.
Tim Spalding of Portland, founder of Library Thing at www.librarything.com, a social networking site for book lovers, said he also believes all the angst is misplaced. He said people are reading and writing more than ever before.
"Twenty years ago people were not writing blogs. They were watching TV," he said.
He said the trend away from reference books is a positive development for libraries.
"They will do less stocking of reference work, which is great. They have more room to stock other things," he said.
Nor does he fear that books will disappear.
"Reading novels online is not fun," he said.
And novels, he said, appear to be more popular than ever. He said the huge success of the Harry Potter series attests to that and underlines the huge hunger for shared literary experiences.
"One of the reasons people read Harry Potter is that everyone else is reading it and you have someone to talk to," he said.
Atwell, the children's librarian in Thomaston, said she also believes all is not lost on the newest generation. While reference materials are largely unused, she said the graphic novels she added to the library this year are a big hit.
"It is just a new world," she said.
Atwell said American libraries should follow the example of the British. British librarians now ask people what they are looking for, then show them the different ways to find it.
"They don't even call them libraries anymore but 'idea service centers'," she said.
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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