May 28, 2019 20:00:00

Paper books are disappearing from university libraries

by

jarmoluk

Electronic books have the advantage of being able to be read anytime on a smartphone or tablet PC without taking up space, but on the other hand, research reports that 'paper books are superior to electronic books' or '92% of university students use paper than electronic books There is a research result that I like books. However, despite the support of researchers and students, it has been pointed out that paper books are disappearing from universities around the world.

College Students Aren't Checking Out Books-The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/college-students-arent-checking-out-books/590305/

In February 2019, the prestigious Yale University of America launched a plan to renovate the university's base library , which boasts 150,000 books. The content is to reduce the area of the bookshelf to secure meeting space and the number of seats, and reduce the number of books to 40,000. The students at Yale University were strongly opposed to this announcement. After all, the renovation plan was reviewed through discussions between the university and the students, and by reducing the number of seats scheduled to be added, it was decided not to reduce the number of books as much as possible.

by

monkeybusiness

Some interesting data are being proposed during student discussions with Yale University. That is, 'The number of books loaned by undergraduates at Yale University has dropped by 64% over the past 10 years.' This trend is not unique to Yale University. For example, at the University of Virginia, which is one of the prestigious universities in the United States as well as Yale University, the number of books loaned in the past 10 years has been reduced from 238,000 to 60,000 per year. The number of students at the University of Virginia is on the rise, but the number of library loans by students is still steadily decreasing.

Also, at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, the number of book applications submitted by undergraduate students decreased by 50% from 2013 to 2017. From this, it can be understood that university students did not come to read in the library instead of borrowing books.

Dan Cohen, who works in the information department at Northeastern University, sees that there are various factors behind why university students have not borrowed from the university library. One is that there is a wave of books digitizing. While the use of printed books on paper has declined, the scale of Google Books and Amazon's ' Nakaru! Search ' has grown more than 10 times over the past 10 years. Not only books but also papers and research materials are the same. Institutional repositories, which are electronic archive systems where research institutes accumulate papers, etc. in electronic form, continue to be developed year by year.

by Gerd Altmann

Also, the way of education and research at universities is changing. In many fields of research, the amount of data and materials handled by researchers has become enormous, and at the same time the approach to research has also been rapidly changing from individual units to group units. In the Northeastern University library mentioned above, in recent years, group work rooms have been used from morning to late at night, and group work rooms used in 2018 have exceeded 100,000 hours in total.

'We're looking forward to these changes,' said Cohen. With the progress of computerization of university books, it will be less likely that the demand for materials will be increased, and books that are referenced only once every 10 years will not overwhelm the bookshelf indefinitely. It also reduces the cost of maintaining and managing the library, and reduces the gap between student-accessible materials that exist between universities that do not have a large collection of books.

'A book printed on paper is a valuable legacy that tells us its history,' said David Prosser, Executive Director of the UK Research Library Consortium . Mr. Cohen respects Mr. Prosser's words, saying, 'The true value of the book lies only inside the beautifully bound cover,' and even if the state of technology and education changes, the book Indicated that there is universal value beyond the medium.