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Changes in the use of literature with time - obsolescence revisited
Library Trends, Spring, 1993 by Maurice B. Line
This author has outlined elsewhere (Line, 1990) the sort of system that might be developed for books in the future. This involves the construction of a (preferably international) combined subject database on the same lines as the large machine-readable indexes for scientific journals, using abstracts with controlled vocabulary which can be searched online, and a supporting file on microform of the title pages, contents pages, and possibly actual indexes of books, which could be called up automatically if users wanted further information on particular books; it would be coded and linked with the bibliographic file. Such a system is technically entirely possible now and requires only the will and the money to implement; there seems to be no reason why it should not be viable as a commercial product. Unless and until such improvements take place, libraries will not only wish to hold physical materials but will need to do so in order to serve their users; if they hold these materials, they will from time to time need to dispose of some of them.
The "virtual library," then, if and when it appears, is a concept that will not apply to more than a (growing) proportion of current intake, and a much smaller proportion of older material. The problem of weeding will therefore still be with us, though less intensely because less and less space will be needed for new materials. This should ease the pressure on libraries to dispose of material and make the issue of which methods to use for selecting material for disposal of less moment.
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