Do School Libraries Need Books? | Hacker News Reader

Do School Libraries Need Books?

roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com

19 pointsrobg14 comments

The internet is a great way to find small bits of information, but most of the time the information is really questionable. Search for a topic and wikipedia is usually among the first entry, which is great for a start but no way reliable enough to put in an academic paper. Of course there are information sources that are just as great on the internet, but getting there is a long process (there's just too much irrelevant information out there); it might be more efficient if you just go get the book instead.

Turning books to ebooks might make it much more convenient to be accessed, but wading through ebooks for information is horrible. I regularly have to print about 20 pages that was originally in pdf form because I cannot stand reading so much on the computer on a regular basis. Not when you already do a ton of referencing and programming using the computer. I'm sure there are many people who feel the same.

I tried e-books and they just don't do it for me. Eye fatigue has a lot to do with it and there is something about the physical interaction with a paper book that makes the process feel different.

Computers are great for quick reference but not great for long bouts of reading...

i read ebooks on my phone (854x480 screen) and if i have the time, i read until i can't sit/lie anymore.

the discomfort of ebooks isn't about ebooks, but about the device you read them with. laptops and desktops just aren't fit for the task.

my mobile phone weighs maybe as much as a book and it handles easier. have you ever tried reading a book in bed, but lying on your side? it's straining to hold the book open, or in such a way that you can read the left/right page.

not so with my phone. i scroll through pages of text effortlessly. true, the screen could be larger, but with a small font setting and me already being myopic, it's no discomfort at all.

"Search for a topic and wikipedia is usually among the first entry, which is great for a start but no way reliable enough to put in an academic paper."

Ah, you're looking at the wrong part. Go down to the "citations" part. Any decent article that might actually be the topic of an assignment will have five to ten times more "real" citations from primary sources than any teacher ever assigned me to have in school.

Wikipedia is still a "cheat code" for school assignments, you just have to use it right. Copying and pasting Wikipedia text is wrong. Following it to primary sources is hard to call "wrong", harder to detect, and, honestly, at the point where you're yelling at the student for getting your primary sources from one place and not another you're crossing dangerously close to "You did the assignment too efficiently, do more busy work" rather than "I want you to learn something from real sources". Students are very sensitive to that sort of message (even if only subconsciously) and we send the "do more busywork" message pretty loudly as it is; we don't need to amplify it any further. (I'd say, if the assignment has become too easy, make the assignment harder by making it actually harder, rather than forcing inefficient techniques.)

(BTW, my "write a paper that could be copied from Wikipedia" period ended well before Wikipedia existed, but unless they've radically changed the types of papers that are assigned, this is still essentially the optimal approach in terms of time.)

Oh yes, I agree completely that wikipedia is not a horrible place to start. I do use the Notes / References whenever I go on wikipedia to double check the reliability of the information. But I do also notice that many times the references will point you to books. They don't always point you to this great primary source entirely online; at least my experience is that this is hardly ever the case, others' might differ of course.

So yeah, I do use the internet a lot to search for information. But in the end, the internet still take me back to the library.

Research libraries need books for a very obvious reason: Authors before the 90s did not write their content to be easily indexed by a search engine. That's what the keyword card index was for! I agree that the internet is the best first step for researching, but as articles age, they will become harder and harder to find.

When I wrote research papers in college, I always located the hard copy of articles I found online. I would yank the whole year of publication off of the shelf and spend some time digging for buried treasure. Sometimes it was a waste, but other times it paid off!

Research libraries are the only ones that DON'T need books.

Research libraries are about timely access to journal articles. Journals are available, indexed, abstracted etc online. By the time a paper makes it from Arvix to dead tree and then to the annual review abstract it's probably irrelevent to your research.

Yes. Working solely from online sources might seem complete, but the result is impoverished research. It's like a fish in a fishbowl assuming it's got the full depths of the ocean at its fin-tips.

I've gotta fall on this side of the argument, despite being an avid internetter myself. There just isn't enough content on the internet in many situations.

Maybe when Google Books finishes scanning everything.

edit: that said, "Bits are brittle." is the lamest pro-book argument I've ever heard. Bring on the e-ink!

The argument for books as a medium is a fair one to make, but overshadowing this is just what students end up using. When I was in high school a couple of years ago books were almost never used for research purposes (despite a well stocked library) - we grew up using the internet for research, and as far as I can tell didn't suffer too much for it.

Books being used less means that an enormous school library just doesn't make sense for schools with limited resources.

I agree that the Internet is great for starting research, but are you sure you didn't suffer for it?

Were all the Internet sources you used reliable and documented? And how could these sources possibly duplicate the knowledge found in printed books, considering most books still aren't digitized or freely available to browse online?

Depends on the field of study. There are, for instance, many sites with many thousands of whitepapers each for computer algorithms, genetics, and many other subjects (I've looked into those two, otherwise I'd list more). A single site can eclipse several large libraries for that kind of information.

Or, in a more specific case, try looking for 3D rendering techniques. Info on the internet easily encompasses and eclipses all printed info on the subject, and it's significantly more up-to-date in many cases.

In a more general case though, yes, I agree that many studies would fall short if done exclusively online.

I completely agree that it was by no means a perfect source of information, but when you're at a school level and doing seven different subjects it was the most practical and possibly appropriate, as long as one looked beyond just Wikipedia.

Possibly not the best for teaching research skills with books - but it did help with learning to sift through a lot of information, which I'd argue is more useful that having your school assignment 100% correct.

At my High School, I used to rent out loads of Raymond Chandler novels, and some science fiction. So yes, if people enjoy reading, schools should provide books.

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