Maybe the thinking is that books in the library have been vetted by a (supposedly) trusted actor. Not everybody can have a book in the library whereas almost anybody can have a blog. I would probably agree that a random book in the library is more trustworthy that a random page on the internet and there is a high percentage of crap. Of course searching the web isn’t random.
For people who aren’t used to, trying to find the truth (or the facts) on the internet can be a daunting task. I remember when I first introduced Wikipedia to my dad. He didn’t trust it at all “because anybody can edit it.” After a while he realized that he could generally look up the wiki cites to further explore something he thought dubious and can follow up by reading the discussion page. Now he probably loves Wiki too much.
For example, my local law library holds textbooks, commentaries, journals, and various series of case reports which you will not be able to find online. Similarly the hospital library holds medical journals etc which are not accessible over the net.
The public library has magazines which can be freely purchased in shops but which do not have an online presence.
There are copious amounts of research, experimental data, and academic theses which are not digitised or searchable but nevertheless can be found in a library stack if you know where to look.
Having read the thread and mused over your fair question, my conclusion is that “we” over-value the internet. IMHO we grant it more power and importance than it actually has. And the “we” I mean are that small section of the population which engages across the net - the techno-literate.
Lets look at reality. The internet is a telephone on steroids. It allows people to move information from one place to another at close to light speed. That helps commerce, education, news, politics etc. But it can’t grow a grain of wheat. Or transport that grain anywhere.
My observation is that the net is mostly used to exchange information and entertain. Facebook, email jokes, but Snapchat and messaging on phones is in the ascendent.
[QUOTE=Ken001]
For example, my local law library holds textbooks, commentaries, journals, and various series of case reports which you will not be able to find online. Similarly the hospital library holds medical journals etc which are not accessible over the net.
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Unless your library has rare books where only a few copies exist, then you are wrong. Give me a title as an example. Even if the book is out of production, I can practically guarantee it’s available across the internet somewhere. Simply go to Amazon or other similar venues and see…if it’s out of print, try a used book site, or search other libraries in your area to see if they have it. The same goes for medical journals, and just about everything else. I’d be surprised if your library didn’t order the things from the internet, use the internet to display their catalog and inventory, and use the internet to help people find the books or journals they are looking for if they aren’t there.
You are missing the point. I’m not saying you could read everything online. I’m saying that everything in your library, including the chairs and equipment is available on the internet…plus a huge amount more. If you go to your library, there might be a few books on the subject you want to research. All of those books, plus a lot more are available through the internet, plus reviews and ratings as well as potential alternatives.
And the same goes for the internet, but instead of the necessarily fixed selection at your library you have the entire world to look through. I think you are fixated here on things having to be digitized in order for it to be useful, and in a lot of cases things are (though often they are behind a pay wall to access that way), but in the cases where they aren’t you can use the internet to identify which books you are looking for, where they are and how you can obtain them. For instance, some library keep their inventory and catalogs on line. Conversely, you could use the internet to buy the books you are looking for.
I think it has confused many people. But I don’t think confusion is a bad thing as long as people KNOW they are confused. When people are confused and they don’t know it, they are arrogant blowhard doofuses. But when people are confused and they know they are, they are more likely to recognize the arrogant blowhard doofuses in their midst and ignore them. They are also more likely to take a moderate position and be amenable to debate/discussion.
I think the internet is a great tool for acquiring information from disparate sources so that someone can form their own conclusions–including concluding that the actual truth is elusive. I know that I have gotten a lot less confident in my ability to “know” something with certainty the older I’ve gotten. And I hold the internet responsible for this. There are SO many different view points that I’m exposed to, and it really is true that every story has two (sometimes more) sides. I don’t even have as many moral convictions as I used to. Not always having to be “right” is a good thing, IMHO. The best thing for one’s sanity sometimes is being able to say, “You know what? I DON’T KNOW.”
Books inspired by the “research” of Andrew Wakefield Mein Kampf
Whitley Strieber’s description of how he was kidnapped by aliens
The collected literature of Rush Limbaugh
James Frey’s Million Little Pieces
No, you are wrong here. The vast majority of printed books have NOT been digitized, though this is slowly changing. Take any novel published in the 1960s: trivially easy to find in a library, impossible to find the text online. You can probably order the book online and you can certainly find out where the nearest physical copy is.
I’d like to browse through back issues of Al Liamm, please. The closest physical copies are some distance away, but I can get them through interlibrary loan. Online? Not yet.
Sigh. I wish if you were going to say I’m wrong that you’d actually take the time to read what I said, address that, and then show me how I’m wrong. Instead, you seemingly read one sentence, figured you knew what I was saying, then against that strawman you proclaimed I’m wrong.
As for back issues of Al Liamm, I have no idea what that is, but a quick Google search of ‘purchase back issues of Al Liamm’ gives me over 4 million hits, so I’m guessing one of those will get you what you are looking for.
I will agree with you that the vast majority of printed books have not been digitized (although some publisher groups are vociferously attempting to prevent such a project by Google), but you may have a misconception of what today’s libraries are. They are, sadly, not repositories of archive works to be preserved. Due to limited space, they are only repositories of works that are frequently circulated. This means that less-popular works get discarded amazingly quickly.
If a book isn’t checked out at least once in a year, it’s a candidate for tossing. While reference works might seem to be immune – since they can’t be checked out at all – many are discarded after a few years because the library thinks they are obsolete due to age alone and they have no way of tracking the usage.
I daresay that Google has digitized far, far, far more works than my local library has on its shelves, and the disparity is increasing as the library discards and Google adds to their collection. Unlike the library, Google’s collection never goes away; it just gets bigger.
Well, I was thinking of university libraries. There are very few public libraries, mostly the central branches of larger cities, whose collections can rival the internet.
XT, I addressed your point. You seem to be saying that one could purchase over the internet anything one could find in a library. That’s true if you have the money. But you could just as logically argue that there are more houses on the internet because you could order anything you need online to build and furnish one.
I gave Al Liamm as an example of a journal whose contents were not available online, except perhaps for purchase, but whose content I could access in a library.
You seem really ignorant of ways in which a library is superior to the internet for research. Both have their place, and all sensible researchers use both together. I can’t muster a lot of respect for someone who declares libraries obsolete and waves away any potential counterarguments.
[QUOTE=Dr. Drake]
XT, I addressed your point. You seem to be saying that one could purchase over the internet anything one could find in a library. That’s true if you have the money. But you could just as logically argue that there are more houses on the internet because you could order anything you need online to build and furnish one.
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Well, having or not having the money to buy a certain book is a whole other issue and one that I’m not addressing. Full stop, any book that is in your local library (with perhaps the exception of a rare book collection) can be found on the internet. Whether you can pay for it, well, that’s another matter.
And I showed you that you can do a quick Google search and get 4 million hits on places you could buy it. If you can’t afford it, well, that’s certainly an issue, and if your local library has copies then that’s great, but it has nothing to do with the point I was addressing, and doesn’t do much to demonstrate your assertion I was wrong.
So, now I’m ignorant? You are making a completely different argument then the one I was making, said I was wrong, and then called me ignorant because you are arguing something different than I am??
As for your respect, well, it would be hurtful to me if I made any such claim that libraries didn’t have their place or were obsolete…but losing the respect of someone who doesn’t even seem to grasp what my argument IS, and has taken their respect away because of some ridiculous strawman argument I wasn’t even making?? Well, I’m not going to be crying in my beer over that.
I don’t know about mankind. But in my own country, the US, the internet is damaging newspapers. Journalism which strives for objectivity, including investigative journalism, is being replaced with opinion slinging.
Going more granular, I think that small town folks could be potentially more informed about the world today than when they were limited to a local paper with little international coverage. But most people don’t like in such towns.
Radio and television are good at story-telling, but I hardly see them as improvements on distributing information. Getting the information a couple hours earlier does not make me more informed.
Question for any middle aged or older, moderate or liberal, Chicagoan here: At its right-wing worst, was the Chicago Tribune ever as bad as FoxNews? I’m sure Walter Annenberg’s Philadelphia Inquirer was never that bad, and later it got better. And then, when the internet came, they closed all their international bureaus and cut back greatly on investigative projects.
