Rows and rows of books lined up on countless bookcases. Some of the books appear old and tattered, while some look new and glossy. Some of them, due to a long time of not being used, are already covered in thick spider webs. They consume space. They consume time arranging them--and yet, many of them are unused. The question now arises: are libraries still relevant?
If this question was asked decades ago, the answer would have been a definite 'yes'. Libraries were the sanctuaries of scholars who are into research. They would have to read through mountains upon mountains of books in order to get that line of information that they need. They had no choice, for where else would they get the info? Nowhere else.
Come the Internet and Wikipedia. Students, instead of poring through numerous number of books, would only type the subject of their query in Google and voila! thousand and thousands (probably even millions) of articles related to their subject of interest would appear. Highlight what you need, and copy-paste it. This is well known as the Copy-Paste phenomenon.
Some would argue that the Internet was only abused by students. Instead of helping students by giving them the tidbits they need for their analyses in a few nanoseconds, students end up with substandard papers by copying others' works completely. However, we have to admit that despite these negative effects, more good has been done by the Web to these scholars.
Over time, fewer people are now living in the library. Do libraries still deserve the space that they receive considering that many of the information written on them, especially those related to science and technology, are already obsolete? Do these libraries still deserve the funding that they get? Won't these funds be put into better use if measures are put up to prevent the further propagation of the Copy-Paste phenomenon? Or is there something in the libraries that the Internet can never match?
I will continue this post tomorrow.
All UPSable
