Farewell to a Legend

Image from The Berenstain Bears.com

While this post is not specifically related to technology, it is related to reading and libraries.  A few weeks ago, the literary world lost a legend in Jan Berenstain.  For myself and legions of people around the world, The Berenstain Bears book series was an integral part of my childhood.  I can remember requesting the books to be read to me and, when I could read them myself, devouring the titles over and over again with relish.  I loved the simple lessons and good morals that the book imparted, even as a child.  While the co-creator of the Berenstain Bears is no longer with us, her legacy in her delightful children's books will continue to live on.  I for one, can't wait to share the first trip to Bear Country with my own children someday. :-)   

Google's Digitization Project

Google recently announced that it would be scaling back its massive digitization effort of books at academic libraries.  As mentioned in my previous post, academic texts have yet to reach the scope of personal reading books in terms of their availability in electronic format.  While Google's work digitizing more than 20 millions books will certainly help bring academic texts up to speed, I have to wonder, was the effort worth it?  When you think about how many times individual library books are used by the average student, you have to wonder if the trouble of scanning some of the rarest books (used by a random doctoral student every, say, 3 years) was worth the time and effort of the project.    I wonder how much research Google did into the libraries before it started pulling books off of the shelves.  Are the selected texts the ones that are most frequently taken out of the library or were they just randomly selected books?  Some university libraries are now left with many texts un-scanned and without the manpower or money to complete the project.

In the grand scheme of things, I can see the benefit of having more information widely available to a greater number of people, but I worry that students who formerly came to their university library for books, might now not see as much validity if they can get the texts they need online.  In that regard, as efforts such as Google's continue, I think there will be increased pressure on libraries to become more social spaces that offer more than just books.  Most already offer a wide variety of programs, but marketing of those programs  will need to be more prevalent as technological strides are made.

***It will also be interesting to see how things turn out with the lawsuits against both Google and the university libraries.  Clearly everyone is not thrilled about this project.  Stay tuned....

Academic Books and Dinosaurs

=  ?????

Pauline Dewan's recent article "Are books becoming extinct in academic libraries?" looks at the rise of e-books and its impact on academic libraries.  Reading the article made me think back to my own college days.  Spending hundreds of dollars on really heavy textbooks, only to barely read 50 pages in each, then return them to the bookstore for about 1/6 of the price I paid for them. ::sigh:: My college self would have loved the opportunity to purchase electronic academic textbooks to be read on my lightweight e-reader.  While many college students today probably feel similarly, they shouldn't go canceling their Barnes and Noble rewards card just yet.  Academic textbooks have yet to reach the level of personal reading books in terms of their scope via electronic text.  What's more certain types of books like children's  and art books work better in tangible form. So it seems that, while academic books are definitely headed towards more electronic formatting, print books at least in some respect are here to stay........................................for now. :-)

What do you think? Are academic print books destined for extinction or do we still need them?

Reference

Dewan, P. (2012). Are books becoming extinct in academic libraries? New Library World, 113(1-2), 27-37. doi: 10.1108/03074801211199022   

Why Kids Today Still Need Librarians

 A recent article in the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology looks at teens today and their relationship to virtual environments and information literacy. The article focuses on how today's digital natives (those born after 1989) are more likely to use cellphones, text messaging, social networking and other information and communication technologies (ICT) as their primary mode of communication.  While many born before 1989 are just as "plugged in,"  these natives live in a digital world.  They use the internet to do everything from online shopping and downloading music to locating news and health information.  Despite their tech savvy, however, research has shown that these young people are more likely to be information illiterate.  That is, when they enter higher education, they lack basic skills of information seeking, retrieval and evaluation.  (Beheshti, 2012)

For a library school student preparing to enter a dubious job market, this comes as good news.

 

The skills that I am currently gaining in knowing what information to search for, as well as how to judge the relevance and appropriateness of said information will come in handy when these "digital natives" reach college.  While many argue that the information available on the WWW will eventually render libraries and librarians obsolete, this article and related research seem to suggest otherwise.  While there is a seemingly endless amount of information now at our fingertips, it's not useful if one doesn't know what to do with it or how to process it.  

Librarians to the rescue!

Reference

 Beheshti, J. (2012). Teens, virtual environments and information literacy. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 38(3), 54-57. doi: 10.1002/bult.2012.1720380313

Welcome to my Blog!

I am a first semester library science student and while I created this specific blog for a course assignment, I hope to continue to use it during my studies and, hopefully, my professional career.  I plan to share links, articles of interest and general musings on library school and the interesting field of information science.  Enjoy!