Absolute Archive Site: The Library
By Dan Weaver
If you think those massive lions guarding the New York City Public Library should be replaced by statues of housecats because of the diminishing role of the library in an Internet-based society, think again. The library’s role is what it has always been—a place where people go to get information in a variety of formats; but that now includes books, movies, CDs, newspapers, magazines, and computer files. More importantly, it is a place where people go to learn where and how to find information, and how to use and evaluate the worth of the information they have found.
When a Google search returns several googol-bytes of information to a college student, it is difficult for the undiscerning student to evaluate them. He or she might feel that information on the Holocaust from the jazzed-up and carefully disguised Web site that advocates prejudice is better than that written in broken English on a Holocaust survivor’s blog.
Librarians are the key to guiding students to where they can find the best information, no matter what the source. They can also teach students how to evaluate the information they have retrieved. That is why, when I was an adjunct English teacher at my local community college, our first field trip was to the college library. A librarian gave a lecture on how to find and evaluate information in the library and on the Internet. The students then worked on their term papers while the librarian worked one-on-one with each student.
Most libraries have successfully integrated the Internet into the mix of media sources that they already have, and its addition has only enhanced libraries. For example, many college libraries make JSTOR, a Web site where scholarly articles are archived, available for free. The typical Internet user cannot access this valuable resource without a college library card. JSTOR exists because libraries pay fees to use its services. Similar services like ARTstor and Aluka are also offered only through libraries.
Finally, what makes libraries indispensable in this modern era is not only the new technologies they have embraced, like the Internet, but also the old technologies they have not discarded. These include the antiquarian books, maps, and ephemera that they protect against destruction and decay, and make available for scholarly research. Libraries also digitize stereoviews and microfilm before they decompose, and share them with the world. The most important technology of all, of course, is the thousands of books available for public browsing.
What computer users call browsing is not the same as what booklovers call browsing. While Google Book Search has made it possible to look inside a book, the Internet has yet to make it possible to run your fingers along a row of books until you find a title that excites you, a title that sometimes changes your life. It is this act—the act of the flesh touching the word and the word becoming flesh, and not just the successful integration of the Internet into the library—that guarantees that libraries will be around for a long time.