The End of Books and the Death of Libraries

Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph

doi:10.7771/2380-176x.5252

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Here we found the question posed by many economists about the future – or the end – of libraries as they used to be. In the internet world, as Matthew Bruccoli (2007, p. 72) pointed out: “The universal library of digitally scanned books is not a library; it is a lot of electronic hardware and software – not books” […] and he added too: “Without real libraries and real books, there will be a lot of unemployed librarians” (Bruccoli, 2007, p. 70). So, the relevant question would be how can librarians continue to adapt and stay relevant in the future?…”

Section: Research Question: How Librarians Help Build Healthy and Sus...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Libraries face an uncertain situation in present times of the "digital revolution" while everybody and every single sector moved online, as Anderson (2005) pointed out. Later Bruccoli (2007), focusing on libraries, wrote his article: "The End of Books and the Death of Libraries". Recently, the closure of libraries because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic limited their role too, and the new scenarios after that reclaim innovation and creativity at the same time than action and purpose.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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End of libraries/renaissance in the “peer-to-peer sharing economy” revolution age? Librarians of the future educating for a sustainable world

Hernandez-Carrion

2022

DLP

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Purpose Libraries face an uncertain situation in present times of the “digital revolution” while every single sector moved online. The purpose of this paper is to search and propose potential library actions as response to the challenge of the peer-to-peer (p2p) sharing platform revolution in business models, a revolution to gain efficiency and to protect the environment. Design/methodology/approach This research focused on integrating economics and library concepts based on a selective literature review and real-world interaction. The main concern is to connect library possibilities with the emergence of p2p digital platforms, which has enabled individuals to make use of underused inventory via fee-based sharing, as a way of obtaining, giving or sharing access to goods and services. The authors balance the existing proposals to achieve how librarians can help. Findings This paper defines key types of potential applications for platform business models in the sharing economy promoted by librarians and describes their characteristics for the renaissance of the “New libraries”. First, “educating” society to face critically the disruptive change in networks of culture and information. Second, “growing” as key reference institutions and community service centres integrating “external” skills. Third, “promoting” the disruptive economy by creation or participation in digital platforms. Fourth, “creating” cooperative markets through social-economic currencies. Originality/value This research was carried out with the objective of determining how librarians contribute to sustainable development. All four proposals to implement represent possibilities that derive from the sharing economy approach at different levels of implementation according to the degree of commitment that librarians require to translate into specific actions.

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Section: Research Question: How Librarians Help Build Healthy and Sus...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

End of libraries/renaissance in the “peer-to-peer sharing economy” revolution age? Librarians of the future educating for a sustainable world

Hernandez-Carrion

2022

DLP

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“…Articles associated with this topic focused on technological infrastructure and understanding policy as a role for modern librarians . Futurists writing on this topic forecasted the death of the book (Bruccoli, 2007) and encouraged librarians to shift their professional focus from libraries qua buildings and collections to librarian skills, knowledge and activities unmoored from the materiality of libraries (Plutchak, 2012). In contrast to commonly cited threats to the book in recent literature, one historical article from 1935 surfaced in our top five close readings that listed excessive dryness, excessive dampness, sunshine, gas, artificial light, sulfur dioxide and actinic light as the "enemy of the book."…”

Section: Collectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Forecasting the death of libraries is not a new phenomenon, in fact the death and demise of the library is a recurring theme in both the popular and academic presses. Despite the fact that both library visits and library employment have remained stable over the past decade, forecasting the "death of libraries" at the hands of technology has persisted as a common trope (Bruccoli, 2007;MIT Technology Review Staff, 2005;Sorcinelli, 2016;. A 1992 New York Times article claimed "you will often hear it said that the print medium is a doomed and outdated technology, a mere curiosity of bygone days destined soon to be consigned forever to those dusty unattended museums we now call libraries" (Coover, 1992).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kindles, card catalogs, and the future of libraries: a collaborative digital humanities project

Neatrour

Callaway

Cummings

2018

DLP

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Purpose This paper aims to determine if the digital humanities technique of topic modeling would reveal interesting patterns in a corpus of library-themed literature focused on the future of libraries and pioneer a collaboration model in librarian-led digital humanities projects. By developing the project, librarians learned how to better support digital humanities by actually doing digital humanities, as well as gaining insight on the variety of approaches taken by researchers and commenters to the idea of the future of libraries. Design/methodology/approach The researchers collected a corpus of over 150 texts (articles, blog posts, book chapters, websites, etc.) that all addressed the future of the library. They ran several instances of latent Dirichlet allocation style topic modeling on the corpus using the programming language R. Once they produced a run in which the topics were cohesive and discrete, they produced word-clouds of the words associated with each topic, visualized topics through time and examined in detail the top five documents associated with each topic. Findings The research project provided an effective way for librarians to gain practical experience in digital humanities and develop a greater understanding of collaborative workflows in digital humanities. By examining a corpus of library-themed literature, the researchers gained new insight into how the profession grapples with the idea of the future and an appreciation for topic modeling as a form of literature review. Originality/value Topic modeling a future-themed corpus of library literature is a unique research project and provides a way to support collaboration between library faculty and researchers from outside the library.

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Exploring the Untapped Potential of Library-University Partnerships: A Focus on Early Learning

Taylor

Pratt

Whelan

2021

Public Library Quarterly

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The End of Books and the Death of Libraries

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

End of libraries/renaissance in the “peer-to-peer sharing economy” revolution age? Librarians of the future educating for a sustainable world

End of libraries/renaissance in the “peer-to-peer sharing economy” revolution age? Librarians of the future educating for a sustainable world

Kindles, card catalogs, and the future of libraries: a collaborative digital humanities project

Exploring the Untapped Potential of Library-University Partnerships: A Focus on Early Learning

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