Ok, different Rant

[sleeping_ox]

Then why does the Library exist? Grar...I mean, in the manner in which it does....it just seems almost sad, that its been confined to the realm of simply being a big archive for books noone cares about and study halls

Comments

[diablose]

It seems to me that University libraries in general exist to store periodicals and employ people to help students find what they need. Since most serious research seems to depend on those articles and/or experimentation, this is a very important resource for a University to have. Because many publications are now available on the Internet, the library seems to be more focused on keeping their Internet subscriptions active and allowing students to do their research from their computer labs, but occasionally a student has to actually find a hard copy of a periodical.

As for libraries in general, they used to be where people went to do general research on any subject, before the Internet became as popular as it is now. It still serves that purpose for people that do not have Internet access of their own. Also, it makes reading accessible for people that would be too poor to get their hands on books otherwise.

[edgelessdepths]

Yeah, I know how you feel about the library. Working there for two years like I did definitely soured me. The library needs a major overhaul to be brought up to date.

I love just wandering through the shelves checking out random books. It's a great way to spend an afternoon. Unfortunately most people don't do that so some books never get checked out. :(

I wonder how many books I've checked out so far?

[sleeping_ox]

I of course wouldn't know that because I don't think I'm supposed to look at that info (Not sure really, it doesn't say what you checked out just how many) but I'd guess around 120 if ou asked.

[yojfull]

Journals are serial publications, yes, as are magazines, but ones with a typically stringent peer-review process, as opposed to the internet, where anyone can say anything. Perhaps some of them are wrong, especially in more dynamically changing fields, but without some of the hard copy journals, a lot of what I was trying to find over the last year would have been inaccessible to me. Some older topics, such as metallurgy, have excellent journal articles from the early 90's, and older, that simply aren't available on the internet. The reason they're a better source is that they have to prove themselves to be reasonably correct before they can publish. Besides, most of the internet resources that are worthwhile for such things, are simply the online versions.

[mbcrui]

I would think that the number of books a person reads in the library must have SOME correlation to the number they read otherwise.

Not even close. After we started making real money, we pretty much quit going to libraries and just bought the books. I did think it a shame, tho, that we moved more books than are in my kids school library.

[pxocean3]

The library is wonderful when it's just you, space, and a whole lotta knowledge on the shelves. I never really check out books there.

Project Gutenburg really doesn't have a lot going on.