This weekend our home was to read the first chapter of the book
Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. The Social Life of Information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. (2002) available here.
Brown and Duguid argue that the modern glut of information will not break down society and its longstanding institutions because the support structure that keeps organizations intact are still strong and functioning. They point to examples like Walmart and Fed Ex, where centralization of control has increased the effectiveness of the business, and the large corporate mergers like MCI/Worldcom, AT&T/ everything( although I think AT&T is pretty weak, at least in stock prices) are just making the largest corporations larger.
You see, the theory was that if the individual could get all the info he needed on his own, there would be no need for institutions, and they would all break down. So far, this hasn't happened.
But it is what some people predict will happen to libraries; that libraries will not be necessary because everyone will know how to use Google.
Libraries, like those large corporations are learning that there is power in being larger. By combining resources, libraries can provide more and better services to their clients. Regional cooperatives and interlibrary loans can ensure that patrons have access to the resources of all libraries by combining their catalogs electronically. Library membership in ListenNJ.com
allows readers the ability to listen to their books on their computers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I agree. I don't think people would stop using libraries simply because they can find everything on Google. In fact, there are still a lot of limits on what you can find on Google or any other free web search tool.
Combining resources would improve services for the user.
Post a Comment