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Paperless Society or paper versus electronic records



A librarian colleague here at Texas A&M forwarded the item below to all of here in the University Libraries.  Although it deals primarily with books and magazines, I think that the concept can be applied to archives and manuscripts as well.  As an old reprobate who feels more comfortable with paper than with electronic records, I sometimes feel that we as a profession devote to huge an amount of our efforts to electronic records, but then I remember that we tended to ignore electronic records for a fairly long time and that those electronic records are probably much less stable or secure than are most of the paper records that have been around for a centuries and will continue to be around for more centuries when a lot of information stored electronically and perhaps not kept up to date when technology changes will be lost forever.

Charles

MAGAZINES & JOURNALS

A glance at No. 18 of the "Mars Hill Review":
Reports of the book's death have been exaggerated

S. David Mash, dean of information and resource services at 
Columbia International University in South Carolina, delights in 
tweaking the noses of those perennial prognosticators who 
predict the end of the printed book. In 1979, one author was 
convinced that, in the 1980s, the book would "slide into 
oblivion." In 1990, a report foresaw an all-electronic 
environment for both students and workers by the end of the 
decade. A magazine piece in 2000 asserted that within 20 years, 
college students were "never going to see a book."

What are the reasons for this irrational exuberance? For one, 
writes Mr. Mash, prognosticators fail to take into account that, 
even though the rate of digital information is growing, it 
cannot overtake that of print media, which is growing even  
faster. Those who foretell doom for bookdom tend to focus on 
the growth of digital media and ignore the tremendous leaps 
made by print. Another obstacle to e-books, he writes, is 
infrastructure. The vast majority of America's print media are 
not in electronic form, and to convert all those books and store 
them would require much effort and expense. And the technology 
itself is still unrefined and costly. And the last reason is 
money. Of the 0.0002 percent of books available in electronic 
form, some cost more than double the price of their printed 
counterparts.

Instead of an annihilation model akin to the horse and buggy vs. 
the automobile, Mr. Mash proposes a model for digital and print 
media more like the automobile vs. the airplane. Both have their 
advantages, but neither can hope to replace the other. After 
all, how would you drive to the airport?

This article is not available online, but information about the 
journal is available at 
http://www.marshillforum.org/journal/mars.html 
_________________________________________________________________

Dr. Charles R. Schultz, CA, SAA Fellow
Clements Professor and Clements Archivist
Cushing Library
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843-5000
c-schultz@tamu.edu
979-862-1555
FAX 979-845-1441

State-of-the-art automation will never beat the wastebasket 
when it comes to speeding up efficiency in the office.
Ann Landers Gem of the Day, July 27, 1994

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