America_Technology

New Technology Paper XCOM 225 Art Mahan 09/18/2011 In recent years, due to the growth of technological innovations, life seems to be more efficient and fascinating, and people can try mass of things they have never thought before. New technology like a digital library has the power to attract every thirsty consumer. However, when we enjoy the benefits from those developments, we always omit a common sense every coin has two sides, and we usually concentrate on the head but ignore the tails. Once we realize the significance of those flaws, we have been more or less perverted by the side-effect of technology, and paid the price of advancing. A digital library is a collection of documents in organized electronic form, available on the Internet or on CD-ROM (compact-disk read-only memory) disks. “Depending on the specific library, a user may be able to access magazine articles, books, papers, images, sound files, and videos”. (Celine, 2009) The level of interest regarding digital libraries has grown steadily as a greater number of institutions, including archives and museums, consider the possible implications of digital libraries. While there are important, unresolved digital library research and development issues, there is also a concurrent desire to develop strategies for systematic digital library programs built upon the results of digital library projects.1 Digital library programs generally include both digital collections and services that facilitate access, retrieval, and analysis of the collections. This interest reflects growing expectations from patrons and end users. In an ideal world, with unlimited resources, it would be possible to provide a full range of digital library services to all users. In reality, resource constraints require a consideration of priorities. Consequently, it would be useful to evaluate potential benefits, as determined by patrons and end users, regarding digital library services. Even without considering digital library services, Saracevic and Kantor (1997a), and Kyrillidou (1998) have provided compelling reasons for evaluating libraries based on user feedback. Digital Libraries are easy availability of information. Easy exploration of information within a vast amount of provided information. Digital libraries also have a better way of education (Use of multimedia) by saving trees and extra resources. For instance, the negative side to digital libraries have been cited concerns over copyright, antitrust and other issues in Google’s plans to make millions of books available online, saying it would give Google a “de facto monopoly,” but a revised settlement addressing the obstacles might pass legal muster. The incentive for authors and publishers to reach agreement would be to tap a new source of revenue from digitized books. Negotiations between the Authors Guild and Google were damped by the announcement on Monday that three major authors’ groups, including the Authors Guild, had filed a lawsuit against a partnership of libraries and five universities, contending that their efforts to digitize books violated copyright. Nearly all of those scanned works were provided by Google. Sadly, I think bookstores will end up going out of business. I absolutely love them, so it will be sad to see them go. With places like Target and Wal-Mart selling cheaper paperback books, bookstores really don't stand a chance. Also, things like the Kindle make it more convenient to get your books electronically. People want to have things as easy as they come, so I can't imagine bookstores staying in business throughout the next decade. Honestly, I'd give them another 5-8 years. A library has a limited budget and needs to work within those parameters to buy collection material for their audience. E-books may not be popular in your library to justify spending more of the collection budget on them. Circulation numbers heavily affect whether more material of the same type or title are added or weeded (removed from the collection). As an example, I knew of one library that would automatically put in a purchase order for a copy of a title once the wait list for that book had grown to a certain number. You can always add a suggestion for a title to be added to the collection, but unless circulation numbers and demand levels change for that type of material/title, you could be waiting for some time to see those changes made. If you look at all the research today, people can do with technology today in things like the health field and science field. That's a benefit and the internet is a great source for information. I know that the library is too but the library is limited where digital libraries can just about find anything for you. I mean, currently, research for a cure for cancer is possible because of the technology that's advanced. Think of all of the lives that could be saved all because we evolved in that way. Education is different too because, for those that actually want to learn, we have the access to so much information.