According to the article, we now have the first death attributed to an
over reliance on online research.  The web is wonderful but it doesn't
give the full picture.

Kelly


San Francisco Chronicle

A new chapter for libraries
Preference for online research has its price

Tanya Schevitz, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, February 10, 2002


Academic libraries were once hushed, austere temples dedicated to study
and research. No more.

Now students largely ignore the stacks of books, instead congregating
with lattes and even Krispy Kremes while they work on group projects. The
fortress- style reference desk is on its way out, with librarians joining
students at the computer, teaching them the ins and outs of online
research.

"Students still come to us, but they may be coming for other reasons than
checking out books," said Barbara Butler, Sonoma State University
librarian dean. "I don't think we should be a traditional library. We are
more of an activity center."

Nevertheless, as the focus shifts from hard copy to electronic materials,
librarians are urgently looking for ways to keep students coming through
their doors -- and to alert them to the pitfalls of the online world.

And while libraries have seldom, if ever, been flush, the electronic age
brings additional constraints. Only a fraction of materials are available
over the Web, and they cost libraries significantly more than their
printed counterparts.

Ironically, although library visits nationwide are on the decline,
library resources are being used now more than ever, librarians and
students say.

The new digital library gives students and faculty 24-hour access to
databases and catalogs from nearly anywhere in the world. Users, who can
search through years of materials with the click of a mouse, are swamping
librarians with e-mailed reference questions.

In response, old card catalogs are getting pushed into the corners or out
of the library altogether to make space for computer labs. Carrels and
even storage closets are being converted into group study areas. Within
weeks, students at UC Berkeley will be able to check out "wireless
network cards" that will let them link up in places like the stacks or
the Free Speech Cafe.

Budgets for electronic databases, books and journals at the country's top
100 academic libraries increased from $14 million in 1992-93 to $100
million in 1999-2000.

Some libraries have even gone so far as to drop the age-old ban on food
and drink. Texas Christian University, for example, established a "Barnes
& Noble Project" in 1999 to come up with library renovation ideas.

"We just wanted to be more with it," said university librarian Bob Seal.
"I had been in Borders and other bookstores and noticed they have a lot
of traffic at night. I realized what people wanted was a comfortable
place to sit and some music and something to drink and eat."

They ended up putting in comfortable living room chairs, piping in
classical music to a periodical reading room and adding a cafe where the
card catalog used to sit. Four of the old cabinets were incorporated into
the design "as a reminder of where we came from," Seal said.

It might be the Krispy Kreme doughnuts sold at the cafe, but while
numbers for circulation and reference questions are down, the number of
student visits to the Texas Christian library each week doubled from
8,500 in 1997 to 17,000 this year.

Sonoma State University opened a new $42.5 million library in August 2000
with a cafe, art gallery and lecture rooms and now allows students to
bring in food or drinks. The library spends about a third of its
resources on electronic materials.

The electronic revolution "has changed the face of libraries," said Mary
Reichel, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries.
"I started 25 years ago, and in my wildest dreams, libraries didn't have
the full range of sources I can now get on the Web."

PITFALLS TO ONLINE-ONLY RESEARCH

San Francisco State senior Sherry Shariati has not taken a book home from
a library since elementary school.

"We are in the new age. If I want to get information, I go to the
computer, " said Shariati, 24.

Shariati demonstrates part of the challenge facing librarians: The deluge
of information available online dramatically increases the need to
educate students about how to conduct research.

Librarians have traditionally served as gatekeepers, running quality
control on resource materials. But most students turn to the Internet
first, plugging searches into Google and reeling in information that may
be unreliable or downright wrong.

Students are often unaware that unlike online databases and electronic
subscription journals, the information on commercial or private Web sites
has not been vetted, said Darlene Tong, head of information, research and
instructional services at San Francisco State University's library.

"It is very hard to get students to distinguish because it looks the
same," she said.

The new library brings some other problems, too, Reichel and others
caution.

Plagiarism is at an all-time high -- up about 40 percent in the past five
years -- because students can easily cut and paste material from the Web.

In addition, librarians say that because journals are so much more
readily available online, students are relying heavily on relatively
recent material and may be missing the more analytical historical context
that books provide.

And many students do not realize only a tiny fraction of material is on
the Internet, free to anyone.

For example, there are 100,000 academic journals, but only 6 percent to 8
percent of them are online in full text. Of those, more than half are
available only through subscription, said Mark Herring, dean of library
services at Winthrop University in South Carolina.

Another wrinkle is that most electronic journals go back only about a
decade at most. It is also not uncommon for providers of online media to
go out of business, leaving libraries in the lurch, with no access to
back copies.

Several archiving projects are under way to ensure that at least one copy
of each back issue is preserved at key institutions.

An extreme example of the gaps in online information was the fatal
outcome of the clinical trial of an asthma drug at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore last summer, Herring said. The researcher did an
online search for potentially deadly side effects before starting the
drug trial.

But after a 24-year-old woman died from an inhalant she was given as part
of the study, a conventional search of research materials turned up
articles from the 1950s and subsequent citations warning that the drug
could lead to respiratory arrest.

To address the problem, librarians on many campuses are making
presentations regularly in classes and working closely with faculty to
ensure they assign work that requires primary and secondary sources and
cannot just be done from Web sites.

"I think everybody on campus is worried about the new generation -- that
they won't get what they think are the most important things in their
field. And in the library field, (that) is the habit of acquiring
information that has a good chance of being reliable," said Thomas
Leonard, university librarian at the University of California at
Berkeley. "If we can't pass on that habit, then the library fails, even
if it looks like a great temple."

THE HIGH COST OF GOING DIGITAL

Ultimately a library is judged by the quality of its collection, whether
print or electronic -- and that poses a dilemma for librarians, who have
to decide whether the advantages of online access outweigh the drawbacks
and justify the additional expense.

Although the digital resources are easier to search and are accessible
from any computer round the clock, the cost means spending less on
traditional materials.

While libraries once had to buy references such as encyclopedias for a
few thousand dollars once every five or even 10 years, they now have to
pay thousands yearly for the online versions.

An example is the Oxford English Dictionary, which cost about $1,000 for
the 20-volume set and had two editions in the 20th century. The online
version costs about $10,000 a year -- but it is searchable and includes
words as they stream into the language.

"It has turned the dictionary inside out and made it much more usable for
scholars," Leonard said. "You can have it open on your desktop and check
the history of words as you go along."

There is a danger, though, in switching to the electronic versions. "If
you cancel your print subscription and then you later cannot afford the
electronic access, you no longer have the previous edition of some
sources," Tong said. "It is a scary prospect."

Nationally, the cost of materials for libraries has rocketed 145 percent
in the past decade, while budgets have stayed nearly the same, Herring
said. The University of California and California State University
systems are trying to deal with the squeeze on expenditures by purchasing
in bulk or sharing materials among campuses.

INSPIRED BY BOOKS, BROWSING

At the same time, devotees of printed material caution that ease of use
isn't everything.

Susan Moller Okin, 55, a Stanford University political science professor,
said that as an undergraduate, she carried around a volume of medieval
literature after she no longer needed it just because it had such
beautiful red lettering on the cover and Old English print.

"It would be a great shame if books go out of style," she said. "You can
take a book out to the middle of the woods or read it sitting by the
fire. A book has weight."

There is also a cross-fertilization process that occurs while digging
through printed books and journals that often does not happen online.

Stanford chemistry professor Barry Trost likes the convenience of
electronic journals when he is searching for something specific. But he
said the print copies are vital to promote interdisciplinary study,
because faculty and students wind up reading articles that merely catch
the eye -- entries that they might not have searched for.

"What is more important to me is what is the long-term impact?" Trost
said. "Those people who are just using electronic materials, doing that
targeted search and not doing a broad survey of material -- are they
going to be as innovative and creative in the long run?"

E-mail Tanya Schevitz at
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