Loss of Connections
Posted by: Sara Rofofsky Marcus
What do you do when the Internet goes down? With the growth of e-materials, how can we help patrons? Ebooks and databases are great, don’t get me wrong, but when these resources aren’t available, how can we help our patrons find what they need? Should we continue to purchase print materials for this situation, or should the libraries hope their Internet never disappears?
August 25th, 2010 at 8:57 am
Libraries should spend their money on improving their connectivity – and ensuring it stays up – rather than trying to create a print collection that (a) cannot compete with the breadth of Internet-based information and (b) is used primarily when the Internet is inaccessible. The Internet is now as much a necessity in many libraries as electricity. If it has been budgeted for on the cheap, and outages are experienced, perhaps it deserves a bigger emphasis.
September 1st, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I don’t know about your situation, but the Internet is very reliable in my library. I cannot remember the last time that we had a loss of network connectivity — and even if we did, my moble device would still connect because it uses cell phone towers.
The question should not be whether to buy print sources in case of network failure, but deciding what (if any) print sources should be in the collection due to user demand. It would be impossible to duplicate the Internet in print (even the Library of Congress cannot do that). The decision should be to select print resources that meet the needs of your local users. And if your local users are like mine, there are not many print sources that they are using!