Library Digitization Project

I saw an intriguing story on the web regarding the British Library (the library of the British Museum). They aim to digitize more then 100 000 books from the 19^th century and publish them online. At full production they estimate 50 000 pages will be scanned per day. This means that a wealth of previously unavailable volumes will be made available to the public in due course.

This is a fantastic project because catastrophes are known to occur. Floods, fires, neglect and deterioration have ruined innumerable irreplaceable pieces of work. Once the works are digitized and become part of the ether that is the internet they will be immortal. Unless of course the internet experiences some sort of world wide collapse.

Imagine if we had had such power prior to the destruction of the Alexandria library. That was histories worst disaster in terms of the knowledge about the world and its history. All of which was lost. We will never know how much we lost and it is difficult to contemplate. This project is a small step toward preventing a similar disaster.

Smart Phones and libraries, the potential

It is tough to distinguish between the potential for smart phones in libraries from the potential for the internet in libraries. A lot of what makes smart phones useful to libraries has to do with the fact that you can access the internet with smart phones. In which case why not just have computers.

You could say that putting a library database on the internet means that smart phones are useful to libraries but really that advantage is not exactly specific to smart phones. There is potential for smart phones in libraries by virtue of the fact that it is the preferred medium for many people as opposed to computers. Therefore the library would be opening its horizons to a larger segment of the population. Smart phones allow people to take pictures and store large files of pictures, so having systems that allow people to download photographs to their smart phones could be a useful addition to libraries. All the sources that have been digitized would allow people to do this.

People could access library videos like national film board videos from their smart phones and the library could accept resumes and issue job postings to smart phones. Libraries could have a newsletter sent to peoples smart phones and accept feedback or suggestions via smart phones. In terms of actually having books available it would probably be better to have tablets to thereby use less space then would be used for storing physical books. However what the library could offer is excerpts for books that have not yet been purchased. The publisher could send the excerpts to the library and the library could allow access by patrons through smart phones. This would allow patrons to give feedback to the library regarding which books may be of interest, rather then the library spending money on books that turn out to be unpopular. In the age when library space and time and money are very important to conserve smart phones could prove a useful asset.