2001: Wikipedia created
2002: Web of Knowledge launched
2003: MySpace launched
2004: Google launches Google Print (later renamed to Google Books)
2004: Facebook founded
2005: YouTube launched
2006: Google Books allows full-text PDF downloads of out-of-copyright books
2006: Sony Reader
2006: Twitter launched
2007: Amazon Kindle
2007: Making of Modern Michigan launched
May 2009: Data.gov launched
2009: Google Books settles lawsuit
2010: iPad launched
WEB 2.0: THE INTERACTIVE WEB
Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, and other sites that allow you to add your own content, like YouTube, and Flickr, are what Web 2.0 is all about. Sharing information and staying constantly in touch through social networking sites, blogs and RSS feeds is a real hallmark of the interactive web. Online social networks have inspired academic research into issues such as identity, societal impacts, and privacy. The ability to tap into the "wisdom of the crowd" is another major feature of Web 2.0 sites. Most notably, Wikipedia relies on consensus to create its articles by allowing anyone to edit content.
Libraries and academia have kept pace with Web 2.0. How else would online courses work if not for interactive websites like ANGEL? The MSU Libraries have several different blogs with RSS feeds and Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts. Virtual Ask A Librarian services like instant messaging are also available. The proliferation of information on the Internet and the popularity of Web 2.0 sites like Wikipedia have created an environment where information evaluation and critical thinking skills are more important than ever: a valuable outcome of higher education.
E-BOOKS
The popularity of e-books have grown steadily in recent years because of their convenience, portability, and advances in hand-held e-book readers (hello iPad!). Although most new publications are fee-for-access, the potential for digitized books to increase free access to the wealth of knowledge has been championed by projects such as Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and HathiTrust. The open-access movement is pushing forward the idea that research and scholarship (think scholarly journals) should be freely accessible on the web. As it currently is, the standard e-book lacks many of the legal characteristics we take for granted with the printed book:
"Honestly---until I can buy you an eBook---not a gift card for use at an eBook store, but an eBook---until I can give you the eBook---or sell it to a total stranger---or donate it to a book drive to raise money for a charity---or pass it down to my kids---until the Digital Rights Management can handle all of our uses of eBooks in a manner resembling our uses of printed and bound books, maybe even give us some standards-based way to track licensure and provenance, we'll be stuck in the Stone Age with these things." (p. 55)
Pelikan, Michael P. (April 2010). Op Ed - Pelikan's antidisambiguation books: ownership, conveyance, licensure. Against the Grain, 22(2): 54-55.
So, it may come as no surprise that there are still a lot of hold-outs who love the print book and don't see it disappearing anytime soon. Robert Darnton pays homage to the book in The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future, one voice among many championing the benefits of the printed word---and treading carefully and optimistically into the new digital frontier.
THE FUTURE OF THE LIBRARY
What will the library of the future look like? Will advances in information technology make books and libraries obsolete?
Librarians have long kept an eye to the future; ensuring continued preservation and access to information takes planning and agile adaptation to changing technologies. In his seminal work Toward Paperless Information Systems published in 1978, F.W. Lancaster predicted many of the challenges and opportunities that have greeted libraries in the digital age. Although he acknowledged that "one might conclude that libraries and librarians will be completely redundant when the electronic system comes into existence", Lancaster still saw a role for libraries in providing access for those who cannot afford their own computers, training and instructing users on how to use computer systems, providing printing services, and curating local and specialized collections. Forecasting the future and anticipating change for libraries has a long and robust history, as evidenced by Gregg Sapp's bibliography, A Brief History of the Future of Libraries, which chronicles the ideas of forward-thinking librarians from the founding of the American Library Association in 1876 up to the end of the twentieth century.
The digital age has not spelled the death of the book or the library. It has created the e-book and the digital library. As of 2009, the MSU Libraries have over 300,000 e-books, subscribe to almost 63,000 electronic journals, and provide access to over 100 online databases. Use of MSU Libraries online resources is significant: last year saw over 17,000,000 visits to the library website, over 4,000,000 full-text article retrievals, and over 9,500 reference questions using our online Ask A Librarian service in the past year (that's roughly 20% of all reference questions). In addition, we have contributed to the growth of electronic information by digitizing numerous special collections including the Turfgrass Information File, Historic American Cookbooks, Making of Modern Michigan, Michigan Farm News, and more. Digital library collections and services will continue to grow in the future.