Back to: Places to Find Information
There are many definitions of a library.Click here for a quick overview of some definitions from answers.com.

Summarizing these definitions, we can conclude that a library is:

a collection of information resources of various types (books, movies, computer files, etc.) arranged for retrieval.

But after reading this, the obvious question is: how does this differ from Google and other search engines?

It doesn’t really. But a library and the materials found through a search engine are not the same; therefore, the current definitions are not enough in today’s world.

So we ask again, what is a library? To answer this, let's look at libraries a little more closely.

What is the quality of the materials found in a traditional library collection? Are they equal to, better, vastly superior, or worse than what you find on the web? Here are some examples of materials that can be found in libraries.

Operative surgery by Frederick C. Skey, published in 1851.

This is in a library. Is it a problem? Do you want someone operating on you who uses this as their primary reference source? Is this bad information? Should it be removed from libraries?

What about this book? The Protocols of the learned elders of Zion

This is a proven forgery that was really written in the late 1890s-early 1900s by the Russian tsarist secret police to justify violence against the Jews. Someone who finds this book on a library shelf today may not know that it is a forgery and may believe it to be true. There are many versions of this item in lots of libraries. Here are the copies at the Library of Congress.

Should this book be removed from libraries? We don't place a note in each of the copies saying: WARNING! The information in this book has been proven false!

Should we?

There are many similar materials to be found in libraries.

What is a library? Is it a place where you can find reliable information? Can you find the Truth in a library? If not, what use is a library? It could be argued that libraries don't seem any better than the things that you can find on the web.

Let's discuss:

• How do materials get put into a library?
• Who decides these things, and after all, aren’t these people being censors?
• What is the job of a library?
  
• How does all of this differ from materials placed on the web?

Every library must have a collection of some sort, and the purpose of a library's collection is not just to keep it safe (that’s the job of a museum), but a library collection exists to be used by people, and therefore, a library’s collection should reflect the needs and interests of the people who use it.

Obviously, with different communities, there will be different libraries. For example, if there are many people in your community who are recent immigrants, they may have different needs than a community of people who were born and raised in the area. An undergraduate college library will have different needs from a library of a university that grants PhDs. The library of an agricultural institution will have different needs from the library of a computer corporation.

All this may seem obvious, but don’t we already have a problem? Aren’t we guilty of stereotyping? Aren't librarians really saying that all people should not have equal access to information?

To answer this, we must keep in mind that the primary purpose of a library remains: to fulfill the information needs of its users. Naturally, in practical terms this must be translated to "the majority of its users" and somebody will inevitably be left out. The needs of these people will be discussed later.

So what actually makes a library unique? How is it different from a search engine?

The secret to answering this question lies in a different realm. U.S. librarians adhere to a Code of Ethics from the American Library Association. Two sections are:

VI. We do not advance private interests at the expense of library users, colleagues, or our employing institutions.
VII. We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources.

This means that librarians can have as many opinions as anyone else and believe in them just as strongly as anyone, but librarians will not force their beliefs on anyone. Therefore, if a user requests the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the librarian must help supply it, although he or she personally may find it repugnant. If the librarian chooses not to supply the item because he or she thinks it is bad, then it really does amount to censorship and is unethical. In the same way, a library's collection should not be simply a mirror of the opinions of the librarian.

As an example of how this can operate, see the story: Health Database Blocked Searches on 'Abortion' (by Brenda Wilson, NPR, April 4, 2008). Someone added the word "abortion" to the stopword list on the Popline database. This effectively blocked people from searching this concept. When librarians found out about it, they raised a campaign to allow people to be able to search for "abortion." A regular person who searched this database for "abortion" would conclude that there was nothing in the database, when in fact, there is a lot of information.
U.S. librarians maintain that the decision concerning the information needs of an individual adult (children are another matter) is a private decision and should not be questioned. Therefore the librarian must remain disinterested when people request information. (This attitude is not shared in all countries, where not supplying an item may be considered more in the realm of “social protection”)

An AUR user may reply, “But there is not a printed copy of the Protocols here in our collection. Why not? Isn’t that censorship?”

No, this represents a choice. No library can have everything ever printed; and, all libraries have limited budgets and limited space. Therefore, choices must be made and it is the librarian’s responsibility to decide what goes into the collection and what does not. Obviously, others may not agree with all of these decisions, and since librarians are human, some decisions turn out to be mistaken. Still, if a user wants an item, it is the library’s duty to give access to it, but the person who requests it may have to wait for a time (which may turn into rather a long time), go to another library, and/or pay something.

Therefore, a library is a place to go that should have the information most of its users need. A library is not filled with the "Truth." The libraries of educational institutions (including AUR) usually attempt to provide materials that primarily have a scholarly value, and that have mostly gone through the process of peer review and/or strict editorial control. (See also: Scholarly Publication Process)

• Users still need to use their reason and determine for themselves what to believe and what not to believe, as they should when reading or listening to anything or anyone.

Trust
Another interesting point is that people trust libraries and many internet search engines. Trusting libraries should be clearer now that we have discussed ethics, but internet search engines are businesses whose purpose is to make money and ethics do not apply here. The Pew report (Fallows, D. Search Engine Users : Internet searchers are confident, satisfied and trusting – but they are also unaware and naïve. Washington, D.C, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2005) is very interesting in this regard. Among other things, they discovered that:

• 92% of those who use search engines say they are confident about their searching abilities, with over half of them, 52%, saying they’re “very confident”.
• 87% of searchers say they have successful search experiences most of the time, including some 17% of users who say they always find the information for which they are looking.
• 68% of users say that search engines are a fair and unbiased source of information; 19% say they don’t place that trust in search engines.

It should be obvious that, with the growth of materials on the Internet, things are changing very rapidly for libraries. The materials found on Google and other search engines have not been selected (as they are in a library), but are added automatically. This is not to say that the materials found on Google are bad or inferior, but the "collection" that you search in an internet search engine does not adhere to ethical standards such as those that librarians try to follow. The arrangement of the sites, i.e. which sites comes up as no. 1, no. 2, no. 3 and so on, is called relevance ranking. But it is very important to realize that this is a completely different and strange use of the word relevance, and something that you would probably never think of. In any case, it is certainly not an unbiased arrangement.
For more information, see:Full-Text and Search Englnes and Comparing Full-Text Searching with Traditional Library Tools.

Access vs. Ownership
So, what if you are the one who is left out? What happens if you want something and it is not at your library? In this case, the question for the librarian is somewhat different: should we have access to this information in some way, or should we own it?

This is the topic of a major discussion in libraries. Books and other materials have become very expensive, and the budgets of most libraries are not rising. If libraries are to fulfill their mission to supply their users with information, there is no choice except to cooperate by sharing their collections. There are various methods of sharing collections, such as allowing users from one library to visit another library, or inter-library loan, i.e. mailing an item from one collection to another.

Therefore, the purpose of a library is to supply the users with the information they need. This does not mean that the library fulfills every wish of the user. For example, you might get a scan or photocopy of an article instead of the article itself. You may want a physical book but you receive a microfilm, or vice-versa. You also may be expected to go physically to another library, where they have allowed you to use their books. Finally, you may be expected to pay for these services.


Back to: Places to Find Information