If I woke up tomorrow morning and I was magically given $5,000 to spend on reference materials what would I do? Hmm… Would I spend it all on online books? Would I spend it on print books? Should I divvy the money 50/50? Or 100/0?
There are so many great things about print books. Images, photos, graphs, charts and the like are much easier to read. The price of print materials is usually less expensive, especially in these difficult budget times, than online content. Print books do not require patrons to be computer literate. And as far as library staff goes there isn’t the hassle of update/changing/deleting links. I also happen to believe that most people still
However, print books do have a few cons: they aren’t accessible anywhere but in the physical library and only one patron at a time
If I went with all online content patrons would able to get access from anywhere with Internet access. I have to say that accessibility is the only thing I like about online books. Some of the downsides about online books: print content, as I mentioned before is usually less expensive; photographs, charts, graphs and other images can be thumbnail size, or you have to click 2 or more links to print them out full-size or an image may not be included in the online content;
I realized I said that one of the cons to print is that it can only be viewed by one patron at a time but some online databases allow one or maybe two people to view an e-book at a time. As a library employee I know all too well that e-books frequently have their URLs change which means you have to change the link in more than a few places most likely.
Not to mention that there is a lot of patrons who are not computer literate or even if they know how to use the computer they are not always familiar with using an OPAC/IPAC to get to the content they need.
So if someone miraculously gave me $5,000 to spend on reference materials at my library I would use 75% of the money on print and 25% on e-books. That might seem crazy in this computer-centered world but I believe it makes the most sense.
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3 comments:
It's interesting that you pointed out that there is more upkeep with internet services (re: changing url's) than the average person might think. That's something to definitely keep in mind as a librarian.
Thanks for pointing it out!
Another great throught process. Online books sure are more work for library staff and are not alway accessible as networks and servers have scheduled and unscheduled down times. Print books however, can walk away to be never seen again. After working with online books for the past 10 years, I am still in favor of duplicating key reference books to maintain both print and online access. Boy would it be nice to have unlimited funding for collection development. :) - Judy
You made some great points about the benifits of online resources versus print resources. I think that one of the major benififs of online sources or books, is that they can be viewed by millions of patrons at any given time. Versus a printed source/book that can only be checked out by one patron at a time. However, I agree with your conclusion that print books would be a better investment. I personally prefer printed books than e-books because they are much easier to read. Viewing e-books can become complicated when one does not have the correct software or enough storage space for downloading.
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