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Re: envision 2020



Laura's request sounds like something that was tried here.
The librarians in this library are reporting that actual reference
desk questions are way down over last year, and last year was
down from the year before despite increasing numbers of
students, faculty and courses offered.   Our spin is that more
students are using the internet and our large online collection
of databases, full-text articles and the like.   No longer do we
get a chance to teach someone about the existence of the
World Almanac and what it contains.   They go to a search
engine on the internet and type "zambia population" and use
that information -- the issues of right or wrong, sources,
bias of information, citation of internet, all of these issues are
secondary to them.

I am seeing the same phenomenon in archives.  Why bother
to go to a repository and sit for hours or days and do research?
The users believe they can find it online and if it is not online,
it does not exist.   Thus whereever we are in 2020 this is an
issue that is going to grow larger.  IF we are in the business
of making our collections accessible, then we are going to
have to content to moving large portions to the Internet in
some form ... thus the archivist is going to need a super
"workstation" to handle all of the issues of scanning, storage,
HTML or XML coding, and the like ...

Dean
.


Dean DeBolt
University Librarian
Special Collections and West Florida Archives
John C. Pace Library
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL  32514-5750
Tele:  850-474-2213;   Fax:  850-474-3338

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