Based
on comments from postings, Can One Size
Fit All--What is a library? (Friday, July 31, 2015; http://www.computersavviness.com/2015/07/what-is-library-part-1.html
) and How can we save libraries from "book
burnings"? (Thursday, August 6, 2015; http://www.computersavviness.com/2015/08/how-can-we-save-libraries-from-book.html
)
Abstract. The collection is only as strong as its community. Public and institutional libraries are defined by their communities and allotted funds from governments and/or the associated institutions. Staff can range from students volunteering time to help maintain the collection to paid archivists and librarians with degree levels in the PhD area. Through online customers, required customers, and luxuriate customers, the collection develops and thrives due to the format of the items from the collection.
1 Introduction
Classic
definitions of a library restrict the term to a collection of information
resources which are kept for consideration and not for sale. From clay tablets to cloud storage, it has
become a wonder how we could continually save our libraries from disappearing?
First,
it has depended on the different formats in which the various items in the
collection existed. The preservation methods of information had to take into
account not only saving the library collection from natural occurrences of fire
and floods but also from disagreements that can lead to war and destruction.
Also, it relied upon its community to define what the collection should
contain. Libraries’ communities have a large
appetite for reading materials for their education and recreation. Wilsted (2012) stated that “Libraries have
refocused their mission toward delivery of information in whatever format it is
available as well as training faculty and students how to use and evaluate the
ever-growing sources” (p.322).
Collections decrease due to their items that are never returned by
customers. Some communities have tried
to slow down the destruction of the library collections by donating reading
materials from their own collections. This
effort helps to defray some of the costs due to “lost” books that may have been
absorbed into personal collections.
Funding of the library’s collection has been shrinking over the
years (American Libraries, 2010).
Personal donations from their communities could make the
difference. Other ways that libraries could
build up their collections would be through money obtained through book fairs
selling donated or weeded items that did not match the mission of the library. American Libraries (2010) pointed out that 219
million Americans believed that the public library increased the quality of
life in their neighbourhood. “More than 223 million Americans felt that because
it provides free access to materials and resources, the public library plays an
important role in giving everyone a chance to succeed” (American Libraries, 2010,
p. 13).
2 Communities
The classic definition of a library can be extended to include a
place that holds a collection of information resources dedicated to a community. Within a community
there are diversified groups.
One group are people who do not have the time and are too busy to
get to a library. Today, there can be completely
electronic libraries to allow these people to browse books on the shelves
online. The libraries may have minimum
staff since the collection has been minimized to e-books which can be
downloaded.
The second group are students that are required by their teachers
to go to a conventional library to look for sources for a research paper. This prevents students from consulting social
media sites like Facebook or Wikipedia.
This interactive communication is not usually stored in a library and
would not be the type of information the instructor is looking for.
The third group loves to luxuriate in the library enjoying
conventional libraries which may have some computers, librarians, book cases,
and quiet spaces. Some of the members of this group may be part of the Friends
of the Library in their area.
This is not to say that you cannot have a combination of all 3 of
these in one location. In order to keep all
3 types of communities
returning to the library to check-out more items from the collection and to
keep circulation numbers up, perhaps staff should adopt the service model of
vendors:
·
“address the various
needs and voices of the community of decision-makers and decision-infuencers at
the institution…;
·
develop consultative
partnerships;
·
focus the offer to meet
a dynamic solution;
·
offer assistance in
managing e-resources, possibly through egateways…;
·
continue to provide
pro-active customer service” (Kennedy, p.45).
3 Format
From clay tablets to cloud storage, it has become a wonder how we
could continually save our libraries from disappearing.
It depended on the different formats in which the various items in
the collection existed. The preservation
methods of information had to take into account not only saving the library
collection from natural occurrences of fire and floods but also from disagreements
that could lead to war and destruction.
What format can our library collections exist in that could withstand
intentional book burning, book banning,
and the destructive nature from disagreements which might end in types
of social destruction?
Until humans started to write in media that was not durable and
that could fade like papyrus, linen, leather, or paper, records in clay tablets
was almost indestructible. We may have
started to lead to our own undoing by creating technological advances in media
to store information that can be fast, easy to store on, but also not
permanent. For example, paper documents,
pictures and recordings on perishable media, and digital content are not always
permanent.
Hence, many modern storage media do not last like clay
tablets. Some last longer than others
but depending on the fleeting time of the various storage media, could this
mean the beginning of our library collections going up in a proverbial flame?
Wilsted (2012) stated that “collections may have a specific focus
that relates to the institution’s physical location, its specific academic
interests, or may have been donor driven” (p.321). This could relate to a special collection
of rare items or a collection meeting the needs of the general public. Whatever
the collection’s format is, “security, handling, and environmental requirements”
(p.321) are essential to note of the building to house the library collection.
Acidic paper in the library could go through a deacidification program
which would take “a paper-based object to neutralize its acidic content, with
the objective of prolonging the object’s useful life” (John, Maitland, Minter,
Hubbe, & Jordan-Mowery, 2010, p.2).
This effort could treat large volumes of bound books extending the
useful life of the books or whole collections, preserving items of historical
significance in their paper form, saving evidence for more review, which would
make the paper-based documents ready for readers in the future (p.3).
Avoid losing the major collections by scanning and digitizing
library collections. Through workflow
automation, “documents are scanned and digitized (converted to digital images),
which allows them to be stored and retrieved” (LEVINE & AURAND, 1994, p. 142).
In
2012, the National Central Library (NCL) scanned
and made available to the public 7,610 titles (3,969,832 images) of pre-1795
rare books through NCL’s Rare Books Images Search System (Yu, 2014).
In order for electronic based collections to survive, the
following needs to occur:
-shifts in budget; new models of allocations;
-shifts in infrastructure;
-shifts in staffing, with new skills and expertise required;
-shifts in power and spheres of influence;
-new and or existing trading partners (i.e., vendors) working in;
-new ways and on new projects and/or in new areas;
-resource sharing, interlibrary loan, fair use copying, and licensing;
-opportunities/challenges for archiving, long-term retrieval (access) issues”(Kennedy, 2012, p.42).
4 Thoughts on the Subject
One size cannot successfully fit all for maintaining a library
collection. The collection is dependent
on the needs of whatever community
is funding and nurturing it. Whether it
is a private or a public collection, its materials are defined by location,
reading need, and format.
References
Guidelines for Long-Term
Preservation of Records. Retrieved from https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/GUIDELINES-FOR-LONG-TERM-PRESERVATION-OF-RECORDS_0.pdf
History of Storage
Media. Retrieved from http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5R2JK_history-of-storage-media
John
W., B., Maitland, C. L., Minter, W., Hubbe, M. A., & Jordan-Mowery, S. K.
(2010). DEACIDIFICATION FOR THE CONSERVATION AND PRESERVATION OF PAPER-BASED
WORKS: A REVIEW. Bioresources, 5(3), 1-69.
Kennedy, K. (2000). Research Collections: Content/Format/Service,
a Vendor's Perspective. Journal Of Library Administration, 31(2), 39.
LEVINE,
L., & AURAND, S. (n.d). EVALUATING AUTOMATED WORK-FLOW SYSTEMS FOR
ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESSES. Interfaces, 24(5), 141-151.
State of America's
Libraries: Usage Soars, Funding Shrinks. (2010). American Libraries, (5). 13.
Wilsted, T. P. (2012).
Renovating Special Collections Facilities. Journal Of Library Administration,
52(3/4), 321-331. doi:10.1080/01930826.2012.684530
Yu,
H. (2014). International Collaboration on Digitization of Rare Chinese Books at
National Central Library: Models and Outcomes. Journal Of Humanities & Arts
Computing: A Journal Of Digital Humanities, 8124-151.
doi:10.3366/ijhac.2014.0103
Stay
Tuned, next week, for the 3rd and final session
of the Different
Aspects of a Library called “Saving Information Literacy”.
