Retorts

Virtual Community

Having just read Mike Hamblyn's defense of libraries against the Internet [Viewpoint, July 1997], as a great fan of both I have to say that while I agree that the Internet is not about to replace libraries, I must disagree with some of his arguments.

He states that "a library is where the community comes together in an 'information commons'. When everyone remains hidden in their homes surfing the Internet then this coming together for a shared purpose or ideal is lost." To the contrary, in my experience at least, Internet users can have a much stronger sense of community than the users of a library. It's just not a physical community.

And while it might be "cheaper to lend out one copy of a novel or car manual 500 times than it is to download...the same number of times", I think the average librarian would be ecstatic to find a book that can go through 500 cycles, and the price of Internet traffic is plumetting relative to the cost of books. Furthermore, users don't cut pages out of downloaded material.

His final argument, that of the valuable data in discarded books, simply isn't relevant to the topic -- any more than it would have been if Pastor Weskott had scanned the discarded books and put them on the Internet rather than stashing them in a stable.

It would have been better, I think, if Hamblyn had concentrated on the added value that librarians supply (superior cataloguing, for instance), the greater convenience of books in many contexts or the fact that libraries can include the Internet along with books and their other information services.

P. Dalton, Nelson