Balancing buildings, books, bytes, and bucks: steps to secure the public library future in the Internet age - Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Perspectives on the Benton Foundation Report on Libraries in the Digital Age

Library Trends, Summer, 1997 by Glen E. Holt

A FRAMEWORK FOR THE CRITIQUE

Two quotations frame my approach to this article, an invited critique of the Benton Foundation's (1996) Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Libraries and Communities in the Digital Age. The first is from American publisher and author Elbert Hubbard (1865-1915) who wrote: "To escape criticism--do nothing, say nothing, be nothing" (Jarmin, 1993, P. 8). In playing a role in the development of Buildings, Books, and Bytes, its collaborators--to paraphrase Hubbard--have said much and done much to help public libraries realize a bright future. I thank the Kellogg Foundation for funding this project and the Benton Foundation for organizing and publishing the study.

The second quote is from film star Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) who once remarked: "I've always felt those articles [about my acting] reveal more about the writers than they do about me" (Jarmin, 1993, P. 10). Like those authors who wrote about Monroe, what I write here reveals at least as much about what I believe needs to be done to yield a bright future for public libraries as it does about the Benton Report's methods and its conclusions. I trust the Benton Foundation will take this article as it is meant: an effort to help move forward the initiative the report suggests (Benton Foundation, 1996, P. 40).

GOALS OF THE BENTON REPORT

The Benton Report (p. 1) articulates two goals. First, the Kellogg Foundation wanted to find out "about where the public supports--or fails to support--libraries as they confront the digital world." Second, the foundation set itself a more difficult task: "With more Americans turning to home computers and the Internet for information, the Kellogg Foundation wanted to help its grantees develop a public message about American libraries that reflected both . . . library leaders' visions and the American people's expectations."

The Benton Foundation discerned much about public support for libraries by conducting a telephone survey with findings modified by a "counterpoint" focus group. The second goal proved more difficult to attain, and the report concludes not with a coherent public message but with a series of suggested next steps followed by a question and an admonition: "What will determine the course of libraries in the digital future? The way that library leaders and visionaries respond to public opinion and the public policy context--as well as their own visions. The library world thus has its work cut out" (Benton Foundation, 1996, p. 41). This article is part of that work. It critiques the Benton Report's findings and makes suggestions for building public support and a coherent library message.

TECHNOLOGY AND CHANGES IN BOOKS AND LIBRARIES

"Technology is a queer thing," English author and physicist C. P. Snow (1905-1980) once wrote. "It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other" (Jarmin, 1993, P. 237).

Nowhere is Snow's observation more true than in libraries, where technological adaptation is a way of life. Long before customers could order a book at Amazon.com on the Internet, they could use public catalogs to check a library's electronic inventory of materials and place reserves. And a decade before barcode scanners appeared at supermarkets, library clerks were checking out materials electronically. Moreover, most public library users already have benefitted from OCLC's networked catalog; a free-standing or networked magazine index from IAC, UMI, or EBSCO; and even online searching by staff using DIALOG or staff Internet terminals. More recently, the latest computer-based networked machines, with their digitized on-site and networked content, have found rapid acceptance in most libraries that could afford to install them. Paraphrasing Snow, while technology has brought great gifts to libraries, its "stabs in the back" are just as apparent in the world of libraries and books. Some examples follow.

College Textbooks

Technology struck a heavy blow to college textbooks. Desiring to teach from current scholarship rather than the two-year-old material found in "new" textbooks, many college professors took copies of colleagues' draft papers, public documents, their own writings, and noncopyrighted Internet material and organized their own sets of course readings. These materials were reproduced at a commercial copier or on a computer disk available at the college bookstore. High-speed electronic reproduction and networking thereby catalyzed a mass movement to customized college textbooks, which hit the traditional college textbook market hard (Darlin, 1995; Magner, 1993).

Reference Books

Paper-based encyclopedias also fell victim to electronic media. As the once-mighty Encyclopaedia Britannica began to issue separate CD-ROM and Internet versions, which one recent reviewer called "unsurprisingly, authoritative and gray," Encarta '97, which had energized the trend to electronic encyclopedias, appeared as two CD-ROMs, "with twice the multimedia" and "wired . . . for cyberspace" (White, 1997, p. 115). Paper encyclopedias are dying or dead, killed by personal computers (Whiteley, 1995). So too are other paper-based reference books, as librarians increasingly turn to frequently updated CD-ROM products or online subscriptions so that reference answers can be as current as users' requests. Electronic publishing, with its easy capacity for continuous updating, is dramatically altering the reference book market (Holt, 1996a).