Future Reading

The main idea of the essay “Future Reading” by Anthony Grafton deals with methods of cataloging information.  These methods have taken many different forms over the years, from sorting clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia through ancient libraries to modern libraries, and into the digital age.  Digitization will provide the largest change in cataloging since the invention of the printing press.  However, this will take a different form than many people have suggested.  It is not likely that there will soon be a single online database of all printed material.  The articles gives several factors that will limit this from occurring.

One limitation is copyright.  According to the article, it is estimated that  up to 75 percent of ever printed are both out of print and still protected by copyright, making them essentially “orphans”.  They cannot be easily accessed in print editions, but also cannot be published on the Internet.  Another major limitation has to do with the restrictions imposed by money.  Very old and rare books are expensive to copy, and the most popular ones are instead copied for use in libraries.  Others, especially those from developing countries, are not cataloged either online or in libraries because of poverty and lack of interest from wealthy companies.  Access to archival documents may be limited merely by their sheer volume.

More and more documents will eventually become available online, but in separate databases rather than one “universal library”.  According to the author, “Neither Google nor anyone else will fuse the proprietary databases of early books and the local systems created by individual archives into one accessible store of information.”  It seems highly impractical for everyone who is adding material to online databases to merge them into one mega-database, as some have predicted.  However, these separate databases are increasing rapidly in both span and quality.  There are all type of specialized databases, including materials in various languages and original formats.  New search engines are better than ever at delivering relevant results.  The Internet is delivering information to people that they never could have accessed before.  At the same times, the Internet will never replace libraries.  Seeing a book in person gives you information you could never get from a computer screen.  Bindings, marginal notes, and even smells can provide crucial research clues.

Therefore, the main idea of this article is that libraries and digital databases will and should continue to coexist and complement each other.  Just as digital databases provide what libraries cannot, libraries also provide what digital databases cannot.  Digital databases expand access to important information.  Libraries provide access to materials that cannot be digitized.  Libraries provide the physical presence that computer screens are lacking.  The article talks about libraries in the past destroying books and newspapers because they had been converted to microfilm.  Perhaps this is intended as a warning against similar things happening today.  While digitization is in a far different category than microfilm (it is much more accessible, for one thing), it is still not a replacement for books; instead, an important complement.

2 Comments Add your own

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to comments via RSS Feed