Date Posted: May 31, 2011
Print Edition: May 27, 2011
By Amy Van Veen (The Cascade) – Email
With everything from Amazon’s Kindle to Apple’s iPad supplying readers with digital technology to peruse their favourite novels, the question is bound to arise: what about the library? It’s already well-known that many independent bookstores are succumbing to the fate of You’ve Got Mail syndrome where big companies, like Amazon, offer better prices and better options for reading. Flipping through the physical pages of a well-loved novel has given way to the quasi-flipping of pages done on a touch screen, but how does this affect those big institutions with shelves upon shelves of word-filled pages?
According to Christina Neigel, Head of the Library and Information Technology program at UFV, “it is not likely, in the foreseeable future, that books will completely vanish.” Physical books “have a property that is not shared by other technologies, and that is the fact that it does not require a device or direct energy to access.”
Unlike Kindle and the iPad, books don’t need to be plugged in, but while the prevalence of new technology affects commercial spaces like bookstores, the library is a different species. “As public gathering spaces become rare, the library becomes an ever-more important public space for ideas to bloom and people to develop knowledge,” Neigel said. The library is more than just a physical building that holds a bunch of books that people can read from time to time.
“Few people are aware that the principle behind the public library is to aid in the development of an informed citizenry so that we, as members of democracy, are able to make informed choices about our political, cultural, and social well-being,” Neigel explained.
When people start to look at public institutions that develop and sustain a critical and participating society as something that is or isn’t economically viable, they miss the point. According to Neigel, “libraries do not turn profits, they enhance human capital.” Though libraries are not seen in dollar signs, they, too, are subject to the financial strains of the economy; however, “most public libraries in Canada do an incredible job of balancing their collections with community needs and interests.”
In regards to the burning question of the e-book as the way of the future, the reality of it is much less optimistic than the technophiles would like to think. “Few people understand that publishers have not only been highly cautious about e-book production and often place severe limitations on circulation agreements, but they are also creating resources that limit personal sharing and use,” Neigel said. In the case of Amazon and their much publicized Kindle, they only let users “share” their books for a mere two weeks, which is highly restrictive compared to the opportunity to have access to any number of books at any time simply by picking it off of the library shelf.
Libraries are much more than free bookstores, they “remain as one of the only gateways for individuals to improve and enhance their station in life.” For those naysayers who doubt the relevance of these public institutions, Christina Neigel puts it succinctly: “libraries signify much, much more than the ‘book.’”
