UNIVERSITIES ARE CHANGING THE ROLE OF THEIR LIBRARIES AND HOW THEY DELIVER INFORMATION
-Elizabeth Church, Education Reporter
Technology affects the way in which our society operates; with technological advancements come shifts in the way information is appropriated, retrieved, and even the way in which it is used. Our culture currently focuses greatly on technology and will continue to with ever increasing emphasis. Libraries in colleges across the world are adopting new, less traditional stances toward the collection of information, sources, resources, and allocation of services for the purpose of facilitating the distribution of information to their students.
Jeff Trzeciak, the chief librarian at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, finds that the most prevalent issue in terms of accessibility for libraries lies in "meeting students wherever they are." Which means institutions must actively seek out their students in the places they frequent, whether they be physical spaces or cyberspace. Mr. Trzeciak mans a help desk in "Second Life," an increasigly popular virtual microcosm of our world wherein members can lead alternate lives with fully customizable avatars. Trzeciak also acknowledges that although some students require assistance they will not make attempts to request it. He dutifully expresses that he would like to "make it easier for them to ask." One way in which he did this was to change the McMaster library's appeal. Rows of computers replaced rows of reference books and the library is being frequented by students with greater incidence than ever before. According to Trzeciak, more students than ever are going to the library for more variant reasons than ever. The accessibility of college libraries must increase to accomodate this resurgence.
These changes, which are becoming more and more prevalent, have also brought on many concerns about the direction n which libraries are headed. To increase the accessibility of libraries, greater costs will undeniably be incurred. This worries many college boards and faculty. Also, the demand for space to be used as "learning centers" means less space is allocated to books and more and more is used for sitting and computer stations. With more information than ever now being delivered in electronic form, digital resources have overtaken print texts in their popularity. Even Trzeciak is concerned about the need to preserve collections, stating that he doesn't want to rid libraries of all books.
Are colleges justified in taking strides to make libraries more capable of being reached by students? Is this working?
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2 comments:
I think the article "Universities Changing Roles of their Libraries" brings up a great question of which way is technology taking us? Is the computer a good replacement for a book? Personally, I think that computers and books must be able to co-exist.Even though technological resources are extremely helpful and accessible, I think that books should always be incorporated in libraries or any type of educational curriculum.
Also, I believe that when students have easy access to library resources, they will use them more.If you get the resources to the students they will also use them much more effectively.
I could not even remeber the last time I had to use a card catalog in a library. Why bother when I could easily find the book I am looking for with the click of a few buttons. Agreeing with Andrea and Manny, I think that both the computers and books should coexist. Although I do enjoy just being able to find what book I am looking for on the web, it is still helpful in using the books for they do provide substantial information. With the new technology rising today, it will benefit the students greatly in what they are looking for when coming to the libraries. It will be more efficient and time consuming for them. Also with this enhanced technology, the effort students will put into attending these libraries will too increase.
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