As online research grows, libraries adapt
Like any college student, Jeremy Stack-Ellsworth occasionally has to write a paper for one of his classes.
Like most students, Stack-Ellsworth, a junior computer science major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will spend hours researching his topic before he begins writing.
Generally, Stack-Ellsworth said he’ll find some of his information at a library.
But don’t be fooled.
He checks the Web first for the materials he needs. Usually, he said, he finds it.
But when he truly needs the services of one of the university’s libraries, Stack-Ellsworth is more likely to walk right by the library buildings on campus while searching for a computer to access the school’s online catalogs and databases.
“The vast majority of my research I do for anything, I do online,” he said. “The last thing I looked at (in a library) was the university budget. But even that didn’t involve much of the library at all.”
Like many modern info-seekers, Stack-Ellsworth finds using the Internet more convenient and efficient than a trip to the nearest library. If he does have to enter the building, he probably won’t spend more than a few minutes inside.
“The research I do at the university libraries is on their Web site,” he said. “I use it to locate books, and once I know what I need, I haven’t had to do much more research.”
Before 1990, libraries were the primary source of information for the average person.
People had their own personal collections of encyclopedias, dictionaries and reference materials. But the average home collection was limited.
If serious research needed to be done, or if one needed a specific book, magazine, document or newspaper, people would go to the local library and look for the materials they needed.
First, people would search the indexes and catalogs, looking for titles and authors of publications that might answer their questions. Then they would hit the shelves, searching for the needed volumes. If they weren’t available, the researchers would have to wait until the items were returned, check another library, or have the items sent to their library through inter-library loan, which could take a few days.
With the advent of the Internet, information moved off bookshelves and into cyberspace. Suddenly, students, researchers and readers could find what they needed to know from the comfort of their own homes or offices. Instead of starting the car and driving to the library to search for what they wanted, people started their computers and searched through Web browsers.
Today, powerful search engines such as Google and AltaVista can help anyone find what they’re searching for in seconds. The days of searching catalogs nearly became extinct when people learned to enter keywords and instantly find specific documents.
Books, writings and publications in public domain are available online through Web sites like Bartleby.com and Bibiliomania.com.
Magazines and newspapers started offering online versions of their publications. Those sites now allow people in the farthest reaches of the world to access publications they would rarely if ever see — except at their local library.
Soon after the digital revolution began, experts on research and libraries were predicting the extinction of the classic library buildings, envisioning a system where everything anyone anywhere would ever need to know could be found with a PC and a modem. They seemed certain libraries as the world knew them would cease to exist.
In a way, they were right.
With so many turning to the Internet for their information, it would seem the importance of libraries would be diminishing.
Not so, said Rod Wagner, director of the Nebraska Library Commission.
“Attendance numbers have actually gone up in the past few years,” he said.
Rather than disappearing, libraries are adapting, Wagner said.
“People are still using libraries for finding books and reading magazines and journals,” he said. “I know from personal experience that when new books come out, we get on the list because people are looking for those things at the library. But they’re also using them for online searching that the libraries offer and for online databases the libraries have that may not be available outside.”
As with many other industries and institutions, Wagner said libraries were forced to change with increasingly powerful technology.
The shelves of books are still there. But now, they’re next to rows of computers and multimedia collections.
Those large cabinets of index cards have been replaced by search-enginelike catalogs that can locate a book and tell browsers if it’s available and exactly where to find it.
If hard copies of books aren’t available, Wagner said some Nebraska libraries offer e-books — electronic versions of texts that can be downloaded and automatically “return” after a certain number of days.
Some libraries now also offer audiobooks on MP3, giving readers a chance to take books anywhere with portable MP3 players and flash drives. A library in Newport Beach, Calif., loans out iPod Shuffles loaded with audiobooks.
Wagner said interest in both new publication forms is high and libraries are continually searching for ways to make information gathering more convenient for their users.
“(Technology) just adds to the tools and resources available,” he said.
Even with libraries’ technological changes, major Internet sites are still stealing patrons from local branches with ever-evolving services.
Most notably, millions of encyclopedialike articles by amateurs and experts alike are now available through “wikis” — editable online encyclopedias, dictionaries and news services that offer entries on topics from pop culture to scientific and mathematical theories.
The largest of these sites is Wikipedia. The site claims to have 2.3 million Web pages of user-contributed articles. It has also assigned nearly 600 editors that check all Wikipedia entries daily for precision and accuracy. For some, that level of precaution and scrutiny makes Wikipedia a reliable and credible source for information and education.
Google — which already has revolutionized the operation of today’s libraries — also is trying to offer more information to its users. In August 2004, the Web company announced the creation of Google Print. The project teamed Google with libraries at Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan to offer over 15 million public domain books and articles on the Web within 10 years.
The service also planned to let users search through pages of millions of copyrighted volumes. But a lawsuit filed on Sept. 19 threatens to shut down the project before it becomes widely used.
“The Google project is a lot grander than most,” Wagner said. “It will be interesting to see what happens with that.”
Of course, there are pros and cons to both physical and electronic information sources.
Familiarity plays an instrumental role in the debate between libraries and the Internet.
Nowadays, children are learning to use computers to search for information before they enter kindergarten.
But while the students are taught to use search engines such as Google, they aren’t taught what is reliable.
Proponents of the library rely on published information created by authors, in which the information has been evaluated by publishers, faculty and librarians before it makes its way to the shelves.
Advocates of the Internet depend on search engines with information that can be created by anybody with access to the Internet, in which information is mainly unpublished.
“You can get a lot of information from Google, without a doubt, but sometimes it’s of questionable nature,” said Beth McNeil, the associate dean for UNL University Libraries. “Resources that we purchase for our students and faculty to use are scholarly, they’re vetted by scholars in the fields, and they're more accurate.”
While the debate continues, Pat Leach, youth services director for Lincoln City Libraries, knows the libraries and the Internet can coexist peacefully.
“I don’t think that it’s one versus the other,” Leach said.
She said the city libraries use the Internet to enhance their services.
“We subscribe and pay for electronic databases that people can access through our Web site and by coming to the library,” she said.
Many of the online databases are organized with students in mind — “Convenience is big … that’s why a lot of our databases are online,” Leach said.
But she believes a visit to the library has its benefits, too.
“They get a staff of people that will help them find the most reliable information,” she said. “The library helps to guide people to the best information source.”
Suzan Connell, Lincoln City Libraries library media resources coordinator, said the libraries will spend roughly $110,000 on online databases this year alone.
The money allocated toward the databases steadily increases each year within the limits of Lincoln libraries’ overall media budget of $800,000.
Research libraries face more involved challenges than the typical city library.
Many scholarly and university libraries house hundreds of historic documents, writings, works of art and photographs.
Because of their intricate and extensive collections, which are integral to the work of professors and students, research libraries go beyond the services of standard circulating libraries to provide materials at users’ convenience.
Catalogs of the University Libraries’ volumes have been available online for years and continue to improve in quality and accuracy, McNeil said.
“Students continue to access it from their rooms,” she said. “Athletes can even access it from the road. If a researcher or student wants to access us in the middle of the night, all these electronic resources are available 24-7.”
In a way, the library even has its own version of the wiki. This spring, University Libraries launched the Digital Commons, a section of its Web site where professors can submit writings, theses and dissertations. Those works are then uploaded and made available for other faculty members and students.
“(Professors) are very happy so far,” McNeil said. “It’s a nice opportunity for them to put their scholarly output up there and have their writings seen.”
Even as writings, historic documents and other works are being digitized and made available through the Web, McNeil said research libraries still have an obligation to preserve original documents.
Victoria Smith, assistant professor of American Indian history, said she likes having instant access to documents, but she also needs to see the real thing.
“Would you rather sit in your house and look at pictures from a museum or would you like to actually see the museum?” she said. “I’m a historian. I’d like to see the documents.”
Smith said she has undecided opinions on the digitization of libraries.
“I think it’s a mixed bag,” she said. “I think accessibility is good, but I think that archival research is a skill and I hate to see it pass. It’s almost impossible to digitize manuscript collections. The scholarship will suffer. In many ways, it’s a time saver, but nothing’s going to substitute for the primary document or the material itself.”
Library officials agreed libraries will remain important to education and the academic community. As technology advances, so will the collections and services inside the buildings, they said.
By the beginning of 2006, Lincoln City Libraries plans to spend about $30,000 to implement an audiobooks download system.
“It’s another way to expand our services beyond the walls of the building,” Connell said. “It’s the future. I think books are going to be here for a long time, but I think the percentage of nonprint media will keep increasing.”
As for research libraries, McNeil said they’ll stick around and continue to protect valuable historic documents.
“I personally believe that libraries like ours will need to be a place where materials that are digitized need to be available,” she said. “Many publishers are choosing to go just electronic and that’s great. But I think research libraries need to have the actual materials as well, and we will hang onto those.”
Wagner said he’s confident in libraries' power to continue offering information and publications to patrons, whether inside the branches or in the comfort of the homes.
“Libraries will continue as they have before,” he said. “It think we’ll see increased multimedia, and I think we’ll see the continuation of the trends we’ve been experiencing over the last decade. Libraries will always be major users of technology.”
Reach Brian Hernandez at 473-7242 or bhernandez@journalstar.com. Reach Joel Gehringer at 473-7254 or jgehringer@journalstar.com.
Like most students, Stack-Ellsworth, a junior computer science major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, will spend hours researching his topic before he begins writing.
Generally, Stack-Ellsworth said he’ll find some of his information at a library.
But don’t be fooled.
He checks the Web first for the materials he needs. Usually, he said, he finds it.
But when he truly needs the services of one of the university’s libraries, Stack-Ellsworth is more likely to walk right by the library buildings on campus while searching for a computer to access the school’s online catalogs and databases.
“The vast majority of my research I do for anything, I do online,” he said. “The last thing I looked at (in a library) was the university budget. But even that didn’t involve much of the library at all.”
Like many modern info-seekers, Stack-Ellsworth finds using the Internet more convenient and efficient than a trip to the nearest library. If he does have to enter the building, he probably won’t spend more than a few minutes inside.
“The research I do at the university libraries is on their Web site,” he said. “I use it to locate books, and once I know what I need, I haven’t had to do much more research.”
Before 1990, libraries were the primary source of information for the average person.
People had their own personal collections of encyclopedias, dictionaries and reference materials. But the average home collection was limited.
If serious research needed to be done, or if one needed a specific book, magazine, document or newspaper, people would go to the local library and look for the materials they needed.
First, people would search the indexes and catalogs, looking for titles and authors of publications that might answer their questions. Then they would hit the shelves, searching for the needed volumes. If they weren’t available, the researchers would have to wait until the items were returned, check another library, or have the items sent to their library through inter-library loan, which could take a few days.
With the advent of the Internet, information moved off bookshelves and into cyberspace. Suddenly, students, researchers and readers could find what they needed to know from the comfort of their own homes or offices. Instead of starting the car and driving to the library to search for what they wanted, people started their computers and searched through Web browsers.
Today, powerful search engines such as Google and AltaVista can help anyone find what they’re searching for in seconds. The days of searching catalogs nearly became extinct when people learned to enter keywords and instantly find specific documents.
Books, writings and publications in public domain are available online through Web sites like Bartleby.com and Bibiliomania.com.
Magazines and newspapers started offering online versions of their publications. Those sites now allow people in the farthest reaches of the world to access publications they would rarely if ever see — except at their local library.
Soon after the digital revolution began, experts on research and libraries were predicting the extinction of the classic library buildings, envisioning a system where everything anyone anywhere would ever need to know could be found with a PC and a modem. They seemed certain libraries as the world knew them would cease to exist.
In a way, they were right.
With so many turning to the Internet for their information, it would seem the importance of libraries would be diminishing.
Not so, said Rod Wagner, director of the Nebraska Library Commission.
“Attendance numbers have actually gone up in the past few years,” he said.
Rather than disappearing, libraries are adapting, Wagner said.
“People are still using libraries for finding books and reading magazines and journals,” he said. “I know from personal experience that when new books come out, we get on the list because people are looking for those things at the library. But they’re also using them for online searching that the libraries offer and for online databases the libraries have that may not be available outside.”
As with many other industries and institutions, Wagner said libraries were forced to change with increasingly powerful technology.
The shelves of books are still there. But now, they’re next to rows of computers and multimedia collections.
Those large cabinets of index cards have been replaced by search-enginelike catalogs that can locate a book and tell browsers if it’s available and exactly where to find it.
If hard copies of books aren’t available, Wagner said some Nebraska libraries offer e-books — electronic versions of texts that can be downloaded and automatically “return” after a certain number of days.
Some libraries now also offer audiobooks on MP3, giving readers a chance to take books anywhere with portable MP3 players and flash drives. A library in Newport Beach, Calif., loans out iPod Shuffles loaded with audiobooks.
Wagner said interest in both new publication forms is high and libraries are continually searching for ways to make information gathering more convenient for their users.
“(Technology) just adds to the tools and resources available,” he said.
Even with libraries’ technological changes, major Internet sites are still stealing patrons from local branches with ever-evolving services.
Most notably, millions of encyclopedialike articles by amateurs and experts alike are now available through “wikis” — editable online encyclopedias, dictionaries and news services that offer entries on topics from pop culture to scientific and mathematical theories.
The largest of these sites is Wikipedia. The site claims to have 2.3 million Web pages of user-contributed articles. It has also assigned nearly 600 editors that check all Wikipedia entries daily for precision and accuracy. For some, that level of precaution and scrutiny makes Wikipedia a reliable and credible source for information and education.
Google — which already has revolutionized the operation of today’s libraries — also is trying to offer more information to its users. In August 2004, the Web company announced the creation of Google Print. The project teamed Google with libraries at Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan to offer over 15 million public domain books and articles on the Web within 10 years.
The service also planned to let users search through pages of millions of copyrighted volumes. But a lawsuit filed on Sept. 19 threatens to shut down the project before it becomes widely used.
“The Google project is a lot grander than most,” Wagner said. “It will be interesting to see what happens with that.”
Of course, there are pros and cons to both physical and electronic information sources.
Familiarity plays an instrumental role in the debate between libraries and the Internet.
Nowadays, children are learning to use computers to search for information before they enter kindergarten.
But while the students are taught to use search engines such as Google, they aren’t taught what is reliable.
Proponents of the library rely on published information created by authors, in which the information has been evaluated by publishers, faculty and librarians before it makes its way to the shelves.
Advocates of the Internet depend on search engines with information that can be created by anybody with access to the Internet, in which information is mainly unpublished.
“You can get a lot of information from Google, without a doubt, but sometimes it’s of questionable nature,” said Beth McNeil, the associate dean for UNL University Libraries. “Resources that we purchase for our students and faculty to use are scholarly, they’re vetted by scholars in the fields, and they're more accurate.”
While the debate continues, Pat Leach, youth services director for Lincoln City Libraries, knows the libraries and the Internet can coexist peacefully.
“I don’t think that it’s one versus the other,” Leach said.
She said the city libraries use the Internet to enhance their services.
“We subscribe and pay for electronic databases that people can access through our Web site and by coming to the library,” she said.
Many of the online databases are organized with students in mind — “Convenience is big … that’s why a lot of our databases are online,” Leach said.
But she believes a visit to the library has its benefits, too.
“They get a staff of people that will help them find the most reliable information,” she said. “The library helps to guide people to the best information source.”
Suzan Connell, Lincoln City Libraries library media resources coordinator, said the libraries will spend roughly $110,000 on online databases this year alone.
The money allocated toward the databases steadily increases each year within the limits of Lincoln libraries’ overall media budget of $800,000.
Research libraries face more involved challenges than the typical city library.
Many scholarly and university libraries house hundreds of historic documents, writings, works of art and photographs.
Because of their intricate and extensive collections, which are integral to the work of professors and students, research libraries go beyond the services of standard circulating libraries to provide materials at users’ convenience.
Catalogs of the University Libraries’ volumes have been available online for years and continue to improve in quality and accuracy, McNeil said.
“Students continue to access it from their rooms,” she said. “Athletes can even access it from the road. If a researcher or student wants to access us in the middle of the night, all these electronic resources are available 24-7.”
In a way, the library even has its own version of the wiki. This spring, University Libraries launched the Digital Commons, a section of its Web site where professors can submit writings, theses and dissertations. Those works are then uploaded and made available for other faculty members and students.
“(Professors) are very happy so far,” McNeil said. “It’s a nice opportunity for them to put their scholarly output up there and have their writings seen.”
Even as writings, historic documents and other works are being digitized and made available through the Web, McNeil said research libraries still have an obligation to preserve original documents.
Victoria Smith, assistant professor of American Indian history, said she likes having instant access to documents, but she also needs to see the real thing.
“Would you rather sit in your house and look at pictures from a museum or would you like to actually see the museum?” she said. “I’m a historian. I’d like to see the documents.”
Smith said she has undecided opinions on the digitization of libraries.
“I think it’s a mixed bag,” she said. “I think accessibility is good, but I think that archival research is a skill and I hate to see it pass. It’s almost impossible to digitize manuscript collections. The scholarship will suffer. In many ways, it’s a time saver, but nothing’s going to substitute for the primary document or the material itself.”
Library officials agreed libraries will remain important to education and the academic community. As technology advances, so will the collections and services inside the buildings, they said.
By the beginning of 2006, Lincoln City Libraries plans to spend about $30,000 to implement an audiobooks download system.
“It’s another way to expand our services beyond the walls of the building,” Connell said. “It’s the future. I think books are going to be here for a long time, but I think the percentage of nonprint media will keep increasing.”
As for research libraries, McNeil said they’ll stick around and continue to protect valuable historic documents.
“I personally believe that libraries like ours will need to be a place where materials that are digitized need to be available,” she said. “Many publishers are choosing to go just electronic and that’s great. But I think research libraries need to have the actual materials as well, and we will hang onto those.”
Wagner said he’s confident in libraries' power to continue offering information and publications to patrons, whether inside the branches or in the comfort of the homes.
“Libraries will continue as they have before,” he said. “It think we’ll see increased multimedia, and I think we’ll see the continuation of the trends we’ve been experiencing over the last decade. Libraries will always be major users of technology.”
Reach Brian Hernandez at 473-7242 or bhernandez@journalstar.com. Reach Joel Gehringer at 473-7254 or jgehringer@journalstar.com.
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