[468] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Future of Automation/Just in Case...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Engel,Kevin)
Wed Jun 10 10:46:31 1992
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1992 08:28:47 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
From: "Engel,Kevin" <ENGELK%GRIN1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
One of the traditional roles of the Library has indeed been to archive
materials just in case they might someday be sought after. Yet, how many
libraries today can still afford to fully play that role? With static or
declining budgets and continuing inflation in the cost of acquiring books and
journals (especially in paper format), the resources do not exist for most
libraries to continue to excel in the traditional functions and, at the same
time, to fully support the new role as guide/provider of information in
electronic format.
Purchasing and preserving materials just in case some individual might at
some point in the future want to look at them is not, after all, a very
effective way to spend scarce funds. As libraries continue to find out, our
budgetted dollars seem to support fewer serial subscriptions and new
monographs each year. If we continue to try to fulfill all of our
traditional roles, we will spend all of the funds we are budgetted yet
inevitably provide access to less and less information in the form of fewer
serials (paper), fewer new books (paper), fewer support services, and reduced
hours. Obviously, something has to give.
And that "something" is a change in thinking. The traditional roles of a
library were and are fine if the primary focus is on paper-based information
sources and a clientele whose needs and interests match that format. Those
same traditional roles do not necessarily mesh well, however, with
information in electronic format and a clientele whose needs and interests
are evolving with technology and our society. To adequately serve that
latter group, libraries must evolve as well. If some of those traditional
library roles (such as "just in case" information acquisition) become just
too incompatible with the needs of the evolving present and future, and it
becomes a choice of either stay with tradition and stand still or develop
new roles and move forward, so be it. Frankly, I do not believe that the
"library" as a unique entity can evolve fast enough; it carries with it too
heavy a burden of past perceptions and expectations. I do believe that
there will be libraries in the future, but their number will be smaller and
they will cluster far down toward the "just in case" end of the spectrum.
More numerous and clustering toward the "just in time" end of the spectrum
will be another entity. The closest thing at present to this as yet
unnamed entity is found in the commercial world--the exact
information you want, provided in a hurry, and delivered directly to you
and all for a fee. Whether this new entity will remain strictly
commercial and whether the payment of those fees will further divide us
into a have and have-not society are important questions.
Kevin Engel
Grinnell College (Iowa)
engelk@grin.edu
engelk@grin1.bitnet
