{"id":1800,"date":"2010-02-16T08:51:48","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T12:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1800"},"modified":"2010-02-16T08:51:48","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T12:51:48","slug":"books-are-not-going-to-disappear-from-libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1800","title":{"rendered":"Books are not going to disappear from libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/14\/the-library-through-students-eyes\/\">Student views of libraries<\/a> are apparently all over the map when asked by the New York Times whether libraries need books anymore&#8230; but I think that&#8217;s always been the case. Libraries serve multiple constituencies, and if you had phrased the question differently in different eras and for different media &#8212; for example, &#8220;do libraries still need to stock cassette books-on-tape?&#8221; &#8212; you&#8217;d have very different responses. Yes, public libraries still carry and loan audiobooks, though they&#8217;re no longer on cassette tapes.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Patrons like what they like, and librarians always have to figure out<br \/>\nthe right mix. Fundamentally, &#8220;books or ebooks&#8221; is the wrong question from the standpoint of library administration. It&#8217;s going to be a mix of books, periodicals, audiobooks, video material, computer access, reference services, public space use, and outreach for public libraries and a different mix (but still a mix) for academic libraries. <\/p>\n<p>From a public standpoint, too, &#8220;books or ebooks&#8221; is the wrong question. Funding public access to information is one of the best investments in the future I can think of. Yes, I think of libraries as part of the &#8220;constellation&#8221; of educational institutions (to borrow from Larry Cremin), and no matter how I may cringe when certain ones are used by students, it&#8217;s better to nourish more sources of information than to be stingy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Student views of libraries are apparently all over the map when asked by the New York Times whether libraries need books anymore&#8230; but I think that&#8217;s always been the case. Libraries serve multiple constituencies, and if you had phrased the question differently in different eras and for different media &#8212; for example, &#8220;do libraries still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy","category-the-academic-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-t2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}