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Connections to the Scholarly Past

27 Jun

I realized today that due to my job transition this summer, I will be without access to scholarly publishing databases until I get a login and password to the library resources at my new college. I also realized that I haven’t used a print version of a scholarly article in over three years.

PCL at UT-Austin

The Perry-Castaneda Library (aka PCL) at UT-Austin. I spent many, many, many hours here. Photo by Timothy Vollmer on Flickr.

As a grad student at UT-Austin, I was able to find just about any print journal I needed, including some very old issues from the 1940s and 1950s. I also used the university’s special collections to find old magazines for my research, which was fun. I made a special trip to Texas A&M once to look at some old editions of conservative political magazines for a research project [PDF link to article].

Since joining the faculty at Fresno State in 2008, I’ve used the library stacks a bit, but never to find a print journal article. The Fresno State library’s holdings are of course smaller than UT-Austin’s, understandably. But more significantly, I’m now relying almost entirely on databases like Communication and Mass Media Complete to find references I need, along with my beloved Google Scholar and other digital sources. I’ve used Interlibrary Loan a few times to request articles not available in full text or posted elsewhere online.

I love using the library. I loved going to find Warren Breed’s 1955 article on social control in the newsroom in a dusty old edition of the journal Social Forces. (Now it’s online, naturally.) It was compelling to me to see a half century worth of knowledge on the shelf, there for the exploration.

Of course, I’m also just as big a fan of the iPad and e-reading as anyone else out there. I taught a whole graduate course last fall without printing out a single journal article, keeping everything paperless by reading it all on the iPad.

I am curious, though, about what it means to lose a physical connection to the works of scholars of the past. A university library’s paper editions may be more accessible to community members seeking scholarly articles, so I suppose that’s an argument for retaining them, especially considering academic publishers’ grip on online distribution. (An example of the conflicts here.)

Some, uh, exciting reading. Photo by marlened on Flickr.

Do we researchers gain anything by being able to physically touch and browse scholarly journals? Are databases sufficient for journal articles, but academic books still worthy of print publication? (If so, what’s the difference?)

Maybe there’s simply a sense of connection to a scholarly legacy that is gained by keeping the paper around. When I strolled the stacks at UT-Austin during my Ph.D. program, I felt a growing sense of connection to the centuries of authors whose work surrounded me, as if it were part of my scholarly apprenticeship to simply spend time in the presence of their thoughts.

And perhaps that’s simply a romantic ideal now outdated — just as it now seems silly to think that the tangible feel of a book is irreplaceable, when I happily snuggle in bed with a Kindle book.

The Google Model of Library Use?

18 Feb

I’m not going to get a fully fledged blog post written this week – on what is normally designated my “blogging afternoon” on my calendar – because of a looming conference deadline, a laptop crash and piles of grading. So, this week, I give you some photos and some questions.

I recently picked up some books from the Henry Madden Library here on the Fresno State campus. I went to the stacks, which, like many libraries today, use compact mobile shelving – motorized shelves that move apart at a user’s command – in order to store more books in a smaller space. It looks like this:

So when you want to find a book, you find the shelves that contain the book’s call number, press the “move right” or “move left” button, and then wait while the shelves beep (too loudly, in my opinion) and separate accordingly.

However, the library offers us some specific directions for using the shelves, as seen below:

I completely understand having this sign from an efficiency perspective. Of course, library users should not prevent others from locating their books by dawdling in the shelves.

I wonder, though, if these shelves and this sign change the way that users perceive the library, and, by extension, the purpose of a collection of books and of books themselves.

We’re already in an age in which information is expected to be pinpointed at a moment’s notice through the use of Google and so forth. Now, students walk into the library, call number in hand from an online search at home; open the shelves; grab a book – and get out of the way, as directed.

Some of my best moments in college were those spent just wandering the stacks of my university library, looking for other books related to those I’d identified through the online catalog, finding connections to other disciplines and other texts that I hadn’t anticipated before I spotted other books in the stacks. I know that those experiences enriched my education and gave me a greater appreciation for other fields of study.

Is it unrealistic? elitist? old-fashioned? overly nostalgic? nerdy? of me to want a library to encourage students to have that same kind of exploration? Or perhaps it’s completely reasonable to limit somewhat those rambling book excursions, in the name of preserving storage space, providing more workspace for students’ collaborative efforts, and promoting efficiency in information retrieval. Maybe the Google model – targeted access to information, fast and easy – is adequate for libraries and students today.

I’m torn. But not so torn that I could stop taking these photos in the library.

…433 words – that’s pretty darn fledged. Oh, well. Back to work.

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