Saturday, April 09, 2005

There are books?

Here's a good article about how libraries are having trouble serving 'millennials' effectively because, well, why step inside a library when there's google?

Yesterday I met with my group for one of my IT subjects in the library to finish our assignment. These guys... let's just say that they don't spend enormous amounts of time in the library. In fact, on walking into the science library a few weeks ago, one of them said, and I swear this is true, "I didn't know there were books in here." I'm sure it's partly that I do Arts as well and so have to spend more time than your average IT student finding resources that shock-horror! aren't online, but I find it astounding that these guys don't have even the most basic knowledge about how the libraries operate. Even really simple stuff (and appropriate for them) like how to print from library computers was beyond them. I was talking to a fourth year computer science guy a few days ago, and he was all excited because he'd just borrowed his first two-day loan. Not for that year, but the first in his entire university career.

I guess it's just a matter of what you need to get by at uni, but when you have to explain to an IT student that yes, there are books in libraries, and yes, you can print for free from the computers there, you have to worry just a little...

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