During the last few decades there has been an increasing push for libraries to embrace new technologies and an increasing fear that any libraries that fail to do so will become obsolete. With technology playing a larger part in our lives and with 24 hour access to information through the web, libraries need to change the way they operate – Could a paperless, global information environment be the right change?
Michael Gorman, (2003, pp.XI) says in the Enduring Library, “It is a feature of society as a whole and libraries in particular that the newest technology is always received with irrational ardor and is always seen as transformational”, bringing up the question, ‘is there a real need to transform our libraries?’. The following essay will look at the benefits and pitfalls of the paperless, global information environment, as well as the steps we are making towards it and the problems we are facing. The essay will focus on the main hurdles libraries face and the reality of reaching this envision digital utopia.
The term ‘digital library’ can be interpreted in several ways. This essay will be using Charles Oppenheim and Daniel Smithson’s (1998, pp. 97) definition: “The digital library is an information service in which all the information resources available in computer-processable form and all the functions of acquisition, storage, preservation, retrieval, access and display are carried through the use of digital technologies.” Oppenheim and Smithson, (1998, pp. 98) also go on to say, ‘One of they key points to the digital library is that the information accessed can be remote from the point of access of multiple locations.” Here the term free also means that not only can it be accessed anywhere, but by anyone.
There are a lot of perceived benefits including the freedom to share and access information regardless of who you are or where you are. Information would also be available 24-hours a day. A digital copy can be viewed my multiple people at the same time, unlike a hard-copy. Information can also be updated regularly, replacing the old. Also time-sensitive information can be shared quickly, which would benefit academics greatly. (McClellan, 2004).
We know that there in libraries there is a constant fight for space, leading to throwing out books. We can hold thousands of books on one E-Reader and enormous amounts on computers, portable storage devices and on the Internet. Harrison (2000) points out that some forms of digital storage are the size of postage stamps or sticks of gum and that “their cost should decrease over time and availability improve.”
Technology is often seen as a tool to speed things up and something that bypasses human error. However computers can only be as smart as their programmers and can only be as useful as the user allows. New technology is always looked at as something magical, but has many hidden flaws. The first issue with technology is the price, which leads to problems with keeping the technology, specifically the hardware up to date and accessible. Mary Thomas, (2000) says in her essay Redefining Library Space, “No matter how advanced an online text may be, as a CD-ROM, a World Wide Web version, or a directly accessible data file, that text is only as useful as the technology available to receive it allows. Without good equipment, users may not get an exact copy at each terminal. How many libraries can provide state-of-the-art computers for all their readers?” As technology quickly becomes obsolete, changing to being a digital information provider is not made up of one up-front cost, but continual costs, as you need to update equipment regularly. Even the technology for converting paper documents to digital expensive and costly, even with many companies promising to do this quickly and in a cost-effective way, for example The Digital Ark (http://www.thedigitalark.com/). Buying new technology is expensive, and so is educating staff and users in how to use them.
Although books are seen as fragile, because of technology always changing they actually have a longer life than their matching digital copies. Peter Brophy, (2000) points out that, “in the traditional, print-based library, each item has to be used serially, (i.e. one user at a time…heavily used items wear out; the cost of stocking little-used items is very high; and there are high costs associated with handling physical objects.” Technology is vulnerable, not just to change, but to a variety of potential disasters, including computer hackers, crashes and viruses. Digital files are also easily corrupted and changed easily. Of course books can be seemly ruined by things like water damage and pages being ripped out. However if you have a hard copy of a book you can see the damage and can very clearly if someone has altered the text or books physicality, but you often have no way of knowing if a electronic document has been changed. Similarly much digital information, (specifically information found on the web) has no one to verify the author or if the information presented is accurate of factual, you can go on the Internet and say anything and pretend to be anyone. Stuart Jeffries (2011) addresses this and talks about some of the different types of misinformation on the Internet including “fake Twitter feeds, phoney Facebook accounts, staged internet suicides, and those Wikipedia pages undetectably mined with lies. Today's digital technology offers us even more chances than Disneyland ever could to revel in hyper-real – or perhaps that should read cyberreal – fakery“.
Michael Cross, (2004) points out that there is a lot of good information on the web, but it is hidden. Students falling exam grades has been recently blamed on the misinformation the Internet, on sites like Wikipedia, (Scotsman, 2011), as users don’t know how to locate reliable sources. These issues mean that people are often reluctant to use new technologies and digital resources, as they are seen as unreliable.
Another problem is the platform in which digital resources are viewed. If you do not have the correct software or correct hardware, certain resources may not be accessible to you, for example different E-books will only work on some E-readers, like the Kindle. Robert Slater’s (2010) article points out that also because of Digital Rights Management, (DRM), not all e-resources may be viewable on e-readers all the time, no matter how good they are. However there are steps being made towards making all E-Books compatible with all E-Readers. For example the Open-E-Book campaign, (http://www.openebook.org, 2010) which is aiming to allow all “publishers to produce and send a single digital publication file through distribution and offers consumers interoperability between software/hardware”. Although this is a step in the right direction, there will always be companies that want to own the rights to certain books and not share these. Publishers know that providing e-books costs them much less, but they still want to make lots of money. This means that there are lots of issues with copyright and DRM, so many publishers will want to keep maximum control over their publications. Having such strict restrictions, (slater, 2010) on e-resources also means that they are less useable, because they have rules which stop the changing on content, (so no taking notes in the margins), and also rules to how long and how you can access them.
Having different platforms and different access to the technology limits those that can access the information, meaning it is not global. Although many people do own a plethora of digital equipment, including laptops, digital cameras, scanners and kindles, there are still many people who don’t even have basic access to a computer, including over 2million children, in the UK, with no home access to the internet, (Shepherd, 2010).
Libraries are seen as places to end this divide, by allowing any member of the public to gain access to a computer, however all libraries clearly do not have the funds or the room to be able to provide enough computers and to keep them up-to-date or to pay for digital resources. Although nearly every public library and certainly all academic libraries have computers with internet access, not many can afford to have all the necessary hard-ware for it’s users, to let them tap into digital resources, including E-Readers and tablets. Paying for equipment to make digital resources accessible to people with disabilities, including programs to support people with dyslexia or braille readers for blind people, so again certain people will be left out of accessing digital information.
It is not just technology that leaves people out, but a range of factors that mean all information can never truly be provided globally. This new paperless library would mainly benefit educated, wealthy, English speaking westerners. Most academic and web-based information is produced or translated into English and although we have more and more software to translate online material, this in itself is costly and unlikely to ever be 100% accurate. People with little technological experience would also be left out, which often includes the old and the poor. Looking at the western world there are huge amounts of people who would be left out, but in the undeveloped parts, including Africa, (Dawson, 1995) pp.52) it would be any even higher amount. However the National Library of the Netherlands is aiming to digitize, (National library of the Netherlands, 2010) every Dutch publication ever, but this will have restrictions, including language and because of copyright laws there will not be free access to all these digital copies.
‘Orphaned books’, (books with no traceable rights-holder or out-of copyright) were often freely available on the web, through audio and digital files, but even this has recently been challenged in the US, (Anon-A, 2011, pp. 6). HahiTrust is a partnership of more than 50 research libraries and its mission is to ‘improve access to the record of human knowledge’. They are currently being sued by a number of organisations and individuals that will stall their efforts to digitize these books and will likely put off others interested in similar ventures.
Even libraries are charging to use e-books, including the Nottinghamshire Library authority, (Anon-A, 2011, pp14) charging for the loan of e-books and even the British Museum, charging a subscription to view their books through it’s new Ipad App, ‘Bibliolabs, (Anon-B, 2011, pp.75), which is cheap, but again only available to be people who can afford an Ipad or similar. Libraries are paying more and more for their e-journals, however these are not available to everyone. As these often involve a subscription, and not everyone can pay for or belong to an institution that subscribes to them. There is some debate, (Economist, 2005) as to why publishers can make a profit from producing work, usually journal articles and other research, created by government funded researchers and institutions. Researchers have the opportunity to share their work freely through the Internet, but many still prefer to get their research published, as it seems to elevate their work.
In The Myth of the Paperless Office, (Aborg and Billing, 2001, pp.76), there are a number of reasons shown as to why people prefer the printed version over E-Resources, including the flexibility of navigation, ease of viewing more than one document at once, (for cross-referencing), the ability to annotate work and the ease of simultaneously reading and writing. Slater, (2010, pp.35) notes that reading on a screen is not as effective as reading a traditional print book, and that you generally read slower. In the article “Health Benefits of the Paperless Office.’ (Aborg and Billing, 2003) point out that there are a myriad of health problems that come out of sitting at a computer, staring at a screen all day, not least headaches and joint and muscle problems. Maybe the biggest obstacle for the global, paperless information environment is the lack of desire to move in that direction. Hard copies of books often feel ‘special’; people enjoy flicking through books, the smell of books, and having them fill their walls. Malcolm Gladwell, (2002) points out, the more practical point, that ”when it comes to performing certain kinds of cognitive tasks, paper has many advantages over computers”. If there is no desire for a libraries to digitize, then they simply won’t.
Having a paperless global information environment would give people endless resources at their fingertips and would ultimately overwhelm the user and they may not know how to retrieve the most relevant or useful information. The Internet already has an overwhelming amount of information and, as Andy Dawson, (1995, pp. 2) points out, there is so much that it is impossibly to index properly – Having all agencies updating digital resources will create similar problems. Having libraries with specific collections aids the user in finding the information they want. In Robert Slater’s article, (2010) ‘Why aren’t e-books gaining more ground in Academic libraries?’ he points out that the use of digital resources, in particular e-books, is different to the way we use printed books. People who read e-books are more likely to read less of the book and the users themselves are likely to be people who are confortable with and wanting to embrace new technologies, including people who work in the computer science, technology, business and medical fields. Hunter (2008), points out that e-journals are increasingly popular, but not e-books. This could mean the end of printed journals and some other academic texts, (especially those that will go out of date quickly), but not of all printed books!
In conclusion it seems unlikely that we will have ever a global paperless information environment, however we may have institutions, and individuals who will no longer be reliant on paper. This essay has hopefully pointed out that these changes can never be global and will leave many out, because of a variety of reasons, including because the way they choose to use digital technologies. Just like the myth of the radio transforming education, (Gorman, 2004, p107), E-resources will never have the worldwide transformation that some have predicted. We have some examples of individual institutions including the paperless Applied Engineering and Technological Library at Texas University, (Anon, New York Times, 2010). The Local Government Group and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Association produced the Future Libraries Report, (2010), which says that digital technologies should support the future of libraries, not become the future of libraries. Libraries need to evolve in other ways too, so they will be seen as indispensible, this could include more computer access and modernizing buildings. Over the next few years we will see libraries incorporate more digital technology, but not replace all print works with digital versions. Technology simply increases a libraries reach and expands what it can do. Digital resources should be welcomed, but purely as an addition to already existing information.