Hacker News Reader

Comment by skywhopper | Hacker News Reader

Some purging of books happens regularly at most libraries. But this advice to rush into the digital world is dangerous because some administrators take it too seriously: see the Urbana public library purge of 2013 when the administrator insisted on removing all nonfiction books published more than 10 years ago (http://bookriot.com/2013/06/21/bookgate-when-urbana-free-lib...). That's blatantly outrageous behavior, but it's the sort of thing unthinking government officials might insist on when they read simplistic arguments arguing that paper books are worthless, too expensive to keep, that librarians have no value when "everything is online" (in fact, librarians become ever more valuable as the volume of available material increases), and that library books, buildings, and staff are expendable wastes.

View on HN

Many of us assume everything is mostly online and so it's our first port of call for any research or knowledge gathering. But I think many people underestimate how much information in books isn't online and just how much useful information is still tied up in those books. Your example of Urbana public library, for example, shows how dangerous it is to wrongly assume that non-fiction books past a certain age must be out-of-date and therefore useless.

Here's a repeat of an anecdote that I've posted before in similar threads: a few years ago I was researching the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. I wanted to find out about his famous housing complex called Unité d'habitation (Housing Unit) first built in Marseille in France. I started my research online looking for floorplans and commentary or critques. I found very little (there is a lot more available online today, but not when I was looking).

Consider that Le Corbusier is one of the most famous architects of the 20th century so this was a surprise. Eventually, I did find what I was looking for by...(yes, you guessed it) going to the library and visiting an architecture exhibition. I ended up scanning some floorplans from a book (and putting them online). From the exhibition, I came across a video of Corbusier talking about the Unité d'habitation - a great find, and I ended up transcribing sections of that interview. None of this information was available on the web.

It's very easy to fall into the belief that the information you find online is likely to be the best or most recent information available on that topic - so the thought of further offline research at a library never crosses your mind. But there is a huge amount of information and knowledge found in books that has never made it online. If you never go to the library, you simply won't realise what you're missing.

North of Urbana, Rockford Public Library did a similar aggressive book purge in 2012. The counter-balancing growth of digital services was not enough to compensate. It turned out to be a part of a weird campaign by the executive director to get the public to see the main building as inadequate for a modern library. The director has since been forced to resign and the new director is pursuing an operations model that has more respect for print.

The purge had support from people who reflexively promote an optimistic use of ebooks. It's important to remember that the digital-vs-print debate can be exploited to accomplish goals that have little to do with any kind of reading.

My community college had activist librarians that would purge books that were critical of the government and capitalism, but they would do it be between quarters so that students and faculty wouldn't see it.

The discard book section would have whole swaths of subject matter for the taking. I can only imagine how physical books are getting disappeared now that libraries have leases to ebook services.

I love ebooks, but they are in addition to, not a replacement of print books. Most books are no longer in print and are not available as an ebook. The physical archives are absolutely necessary.

> (in fact, librarians become ever more valuable as the volume of available material increases)

This cannot be overstated. It really hit me hard when I realized that Cloud Imperium (a video game developer, Star Citizen) has a librarian on staff.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherie-heiberg-15015859

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXsc_LYZf0I

Why the emphasis on government ? I have heard this argument from the private sector as well. And louder.

>> in fact, librarians become ever more valuable as the volume of available material increases

But we also have great tools to manage information, so now it becomes the classic battle of man vs machine and today , in order to be on top , you usually need to combine man and machine which requires a new type of librarian.

A lot of of this works is about attacking various angles of curation and book discovery, tagging books with more in-depth tags to allow better discoverability, giving book reviews, building better search engines , talking with users about books , etc.

But seeing this work mostly done by non traditional librarians, programmers and lay people, and rarely by librarians , i do wonder what role is left for traditional librarians.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com