"Whither Libraries" Lancaster

This author’s rather buoyantly optimistic belief in the possibility of a paperless library or space is really quite interesting to see in a document, because we live in a world where a lot of important information can be communicated electronically, but we still have libraries and we still like paper as a format. This relates to the conversations we have had in class about tactile sensations or comfort surrounding the reading experience, and I think the consensus was (in a biased audience, I admit) that we all much rather read things on paper for several reasons, nearly all for practical, not just nostalgic, reasons. One thing that the author did not anticipate at all was that the cost for libraries to subscribe to electronic periodicals is no less than those published on paper, and in some cases the price has gone up. Talking to my boss who is a serials specialist, it appears that the actual benefits of an electronic publication like convenience is simply outweighed by the problems of how libraries can use and duplicate and lend the electronic material that they supposedly ‘own.’ Also, the author, and most of society, I think, does not recognize the problems that electronic versions of publications brings into play that paper never did. Now, to view a publication online or electronically it is necessary to be using a machine of some kind that uses a specific kind of energy, while paper exists independently no matter where it is and what the world looks like around it. So in case of a natural disaster, say, some publications would literally cease to exist, while their paper counterparts still would. In some sense in my mind that means that whatever the libraries are paying for isn’t real, isn’t necessarily physical, and that worries me that libraries are investing money in a kind of format that is so narrow in its use and ability to change.