In every subject at least once come the question of the relevance of the library and the future of books. This week we explore the relevance and future of reference materials and if the internet will make them superfluous in physical formats.
In terms of the library itself everyone in my family borrows regularly from both school and local library so i'm not imagining its demise right away - i think a library is more than books its also a community place! Follow this link to a piece by Zadie Smith on libraries
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/02/north-west-london-blues/
My comments in brief:
Reference sections - I think physical will decline over time especially as encyclopedias like Britannica are available online. I liked the way VERSO (http://learn.quinnipiac.edu/verso/versomain.html) organised their reference section online and although the interface is a little clunky it is a familiar and less daunting way of browsing a reference section - goodness knows sometimes finding the right journal in our CSU library catalogue can be hard even when you know the name of the one you want - try find Access just for fun!.
We also discussed Wikipedia - i admit to using it - but usually only to find out things like what other movies an actor has been in. But agree with the blog sentiment that it's fine as long as you know its not a reliable peer reviewed resource. Having said that I would never use it for academic work!
Dictionaries - there's still merit to physical ones. After all we sometimes need to clarify meanings, pronunciations etc when we are not online.
Atlas - think you need to know why you want to use the Atlas first.... is it to find animal populations, topography, population etc - each different use probably has a more relevant atlas available.. and probably online provides more options that physical formats can
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