Another option for "The Way of the Future"?

Wow, pretty amazing. The University of Chicago have spent a fortune investing in preserving their printed resources. This library is thus proof that libraries are not obsolete in terms of the printed resource and is not conceding completely to the digital world. Susie Allen's article on the new library entitled "Mansueto Library celebrates books in digital era" (2011), makes an interesting argument for this:

In spite of the abundance of resources online, most researchers have not turned away from printed works. Indeed, when sociologist Andrew Abbott began a study of library use at UChicago, he discovered a strong correlation between the use of print and digital resources. “The model that people have in their minds is that the world is made up of conservatives who don’t use electronic stuff and radicals who do, but that’s not true at all,” says Abbott, the Gustavus F. & Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology and the College. “The key thing to understand is that good researchers use more of both" (p.1).

This idea resonated with me because after reading many of the discussions about Reference Materials, I found many posts were either pondering the economic value of purchasing print reference materials vs. online materials or outright saying "why would we bother spending money on print reference materials?" (Jennifer P., May 28, 2011). For myself, I would feel that a library without a print reference section to be incomplete. Sure, I agree that accessing information from electronic sources, such as online dictionaries, has its benefits like ease of use, storage, continual updates, accessibility outside the library and multiple users at a time, but I still think it is important to have a current set of printed dictionaries as well. We should also take into consideration, that if we do not have a printed reference section we are not able to teach our students how to access information from any source other than electronic. This would be a disservice as locating information from print is a skill they will require later on in life. Some examples I can think of right now would be, finding something in a phone book, locating somewhere on a map, reading through a contract, accessing information from university textbooks, finding information about your car in its manual etc. Sure many of these examples are available in electronic form as well, but for the majority of the time they are still used primarily in print form , so students need to know how to access and use the information.

We also have to take into consideration if books are to go the way of the dinosaurs, what is the next thing to concede to technology? Librarians? One School district in Ontario seems to think so. Ian Brown speaks of this in his article entitled "Don't discard the librarians" (2011). According to Windsor-Essex Catholic School District in Ontario, teacher-librarians are dispensable. They announced their decision to “shut its school libraries and dump all but four of its library technicians” (p. 1). As for the books and resources – they will be relocated into the classrooms. The reasoning behind the cuts were the budget and the belief that libraries are obsolete in a digital age. Brown goes on to defend libraries stating “Human knowledge is now thought to double every five years. The need for a guide through that morass, for a knowledge concierge…is critical” (p.1). May seem ludicrous to image a library without a librarian, but twenty years ago the same could be said about a library without printed materials. This makes a person ponder if printed materials are so easily rationalized away and replaced, how easy would it be to do so with TLs throughout all the schools?

In closing, back to the Mansueto Library, the architects and designers of it have found a way to minimize the need for space by incorporating the newest technology, but have not limited the access to printed materials. Not something we could ever hope to obtain, on this scale, within our school libraries but none the less a very futuristic look and design of a library.


Works Cited:

Allen, Susie. "Mansueto Library Celebrates Books in Digital Era." The University of Chicago 
                     Library News. 16 May 2011. Web. 01 June 2011. <http://news.lib.uchicago.edu
                     /blog/2011/05/16/mansueto-library-celebrates-books-in-digital-era/>.
Brown, Ian. "Don't Discard the Librarians." Globe and Mail. 20 May 2011. Web. 28 May 2011.
                    <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/dont-discard-the-librarians
                     /article2030514/>.