> "What's so great about libraries? Seems like a very inefficient way to store/disseminate information in 2018"
I'm going to repeat something I've said previously on Hacker News: people underestimate how much information in books isn't online and just how much useful information is still tied up in those books. Many of us assume everything is mostly online and so it's our first port of call for any research or knowledge gathering.
A few years ago I was researching the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. I wanted to find out about his famous housing complex called Unité d'habitation (Housing Unit) first built in Marseille in France. I started my research online looking for floorplans and commentary or critques. I found very little (there is a lot more available online today, but not when I was looking).
Consider that Le Corbusier is one of the most famous architects of the 20th century so this was a surprise. Eventually, I did find what I was looking for by...(yes, you guessed it) going to the library and visiting an architecture exhibition. I ended up scanning some floorplans from a book (and putting them online). From the exhibition, I came across a video of Corbusier talking about the Unité d'habitation - a great find, and I ended up transcribing sections of that interview. None of this information was available on the web.
It's very easy to fall into the belief that the information you find online is likely to be the best or most recent information available on that topic - so the thought of further offline research at a library never crosses your mind. But there is a huge amount of information and knowledge found in books that has never made it online. If you never go to the library, you won't realise what you're missing.
UK/England: branch libraries in outlying suburbs and small towns/out of town estates are closing as a result of changes in the local authority funding formula devised by the national government. The larger cities have a central library with a full range of services.
In the UK there is the inter-library loan service. As the name suggests, I can track down a reference to a book, then I can request the book via the inter-library loan service, where it is delivered to my local library. I can then borrow the book or consult it on the premises (depends on cost/rarity of the book). Most public libraries will charge a fee, usually a few pounds.
The COPAC library catalogue tells me which university libraries contain copies of the book I want to read which can speed up the inter-library loan turn around (usually 3 weeks).
To me this management of information that has not yet been digitised and that is not widely disseminated is very valuable now and again. Discovery and search made more efficient by free use of (expensively gathered) metadata on a public database.
You also sometimes need a particular book even if the information is available online. I was self-studying for some A-levels, and needs the books that were based on the curriculum. I put in a request with my local library, and a few days later I had a stack of six (or so) books waiting for me.
I still wish I'd found more time to make use of the Cambridge University Library during my degree. It's a tremendous place to work, but I never really took full advantage of it.
This is even true for technical information. I needed to calculate heat dissipation in a HV transformer, and could not find anything online other than brief hand-wavy napkin math. Wouldn't you know it, my small-town library could get the old engineering textbook I needed next day through library loan. Not as convenient as a web page, but I'm glad I thought to check before buying the book used.
Indeed. I've gone to the state library specifically to investigate accounts of Australian indigenous contact and anthropology.
Going through the books on the shelves there, its astounding just how much information exists that is not online at all, not even discounting that which is online but otherwise not freely available and ordered.
I'm going to repeat something I've said previously on Hacker News: people underestimate how much information in books isn't online and just how much useful information is still tied up in those books. Many of us assume everything is mostly online and so it's our first port of call for any research or knowledge gathering.
A few years ago I was researching the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. I wanted to find out about his famous housing complex called Unité d'habitation (Housing Unit) first built in Marseille in France. I started my research online looking for floorplans and commentary or critques. I found very little (there is a lot more available online today, but not when I was looking).
Consider that Le Corbusier is one of the most famous architects of the 20th century so this was a surprise. Eventually, I did find what I was looking for by...(yes, you guessed it) going to the library and visiting an architecture exhibition. I ended up scanning some floorplans from a book (and putting them online). From the exhibition, I came across a video of Corbusier talking about the Unité d'habitation - a great find, and I ended up transcribing sections of that interview. None of this information was available on the web.
It's very easy to fall into the belief that the information you find online is likely to be the best or most recent information available on that topic - so the thought of further offline research at a library never crosses your mind. But there is a huge amount of information and knowledge found in books that has never made it online. If you never go to the library, you won't realise what you're missing.