Municipal libraries are cautiously entering the information technology age with plans to introduce limited Internet access
Buff Thokoa
When was the last time you stepped into a library? If you are like me and enjoy these serenely musty environments with their treasure of information, advice and pure entertainment, you may have noticed a distinct lack of flickering screens save the monochrome dinosaur at the checkout counter.
To many this may be a blessing in disguise but in these days of Internet, Internet, Internet, one may quite rightly wonder how the age- old repository of information is adapting to its “clickable” cousin. How have public, school and university libraries been affected by the Internet and how do they plan to exploit this new medium?
Marieki Van der Vyver from the Northern Metropolitan Local Council Library and Information Services has some answers on when Internet junkies like myself will be able to get a fix in their local library. Although she is not technically oriented she was able to give me a feel for the spirit behind the future library.
In South Africa the public library system has, like many other institutions, been directed at a minority white population. It is now turning its focus more and more to previously disadvantaged areas. It aims to support educational establishments with reference material, help foster a culture of reading books and to serve as a source of information retrieval.
At present there is no Internet for public use in the public library system. The main reason for this is obviously cost. The infrastructure to set up such a system would require the training of personnel and the acquisition of computers and the hardware/software associated with them. This represents a major financial undertaking.
To get a technical perspective I spoke to Barry Brooke-Norris from the metropolitan library who outlined the vision of the national library system. He was quick to stress that this must be viewed as a long-term plan but it is “part of the mission of the library to provide Internet in some range or form [and] … move into the information age”.
He describes a library made up of the traditional book section, a recreational section and a computer section. This computer section would provide Internet access and, most importantly, training. In South Africa, a major obstacle to widespread Internet use is people’s unfamiliarity with the computer. Training would encourage the use of the PC as an information retrieval tool.
Libraries have an electronic database of their catalogue. In Johannesburg, the main catalogues are the legacy systems from old Randburg, old Sandton, old Roodepoort, old Johannesburg and finally Midrand. They run off of three main software platforms, Urica, Erudite and Libris.
The aim is to unify the database of libraries within the system. This unified system would allow for inter-library loans, whereby one would look for a book of their choice within the library system as a whole not just that particular library system and be able to loan that book.
In time, this catalogue information as well as links to other sites will be organised on a website. This portal would be an initial point of departure with information relating to the library system and links chosen by the library to information services outside its system.
These information services would range from online encyclopedias, dictionaries, and newspapers to online companies specialising in digitised text. These companies have links to publishers and take care of thorny issues like copyright.
School libraries differ from the public in that the users are exclusively children. In this environment the Internet has to complement the existing educational tools. It is very useful as a source of current information such as electronic newspapers. There are also numerous educational software programs that run off the Internet.
In the more affluent schools there is already Internet use. Here the Internet differs in use from a database for reference material to a communication tool. In less affluent schools, it is seen as a useful tool but one which cannot supplant the basic skills of information gathering and processing.
Just as with books, the skill of information gathering on the Internet must also be developed. For young people doing research on the Internet, the problem lies in the fact that fact and fiction are very blurred on the Internet. At Saint Barnabas College, even though there is no Internet access at school, many students use it at home to do their assignments.
This has resulted in some amusing incidents. For example, a grade seven student doing research for a project on “hunter-gatherers” based it almost entirely on a website created by a 15-year-old based in Sweden. To avoid such potential blunders a teacher is required to guide students to sources of information that are factual, relevant and authoritative.
For young children, adult supervision is necessary. This requires that adults are themselves adept at using the Internet, or at least patient observers of adept children.
Those network managers given the task of blocking pornography in the workplace know how difficult it is to filter out such content. The presence of an adult means they can react immediately to any sensitive information and give it proper context.
I asked Raylien Stossels, the librarian at Saint Barnabas, how she viewed the Internet. She sounds slightly sad that they have no Internet access and she acknowledges “that to be part of the global village you need to expose people to the Internet”. She does not, however, see it as a substitute for books and points out that they do research exercises where students are taught how to narrow down terminology and word associations to develop efficient search habits.
For students from less privileged backgrounds, the fact that they do not have this tool at home means that it is a tool with limited use outside the classroom. This begs the question of whether at that level of education the cost of the Internet really justifies its use.
The environment that has taken to the Internet the most in the past five years is undoubtedly the university. In an environment where research is crucial to the reputation of the establishment, the university library has recognised that it cannot on its own provide all the information its users require.
Most university libraries have already moved towards an electronic catalogue system. Unisa, Wits, Pretoria and RAU all use customised versions of an American system called Innopac. This has become incorporated into university websites. Universities like the above belong to consortiums like Gaelic and have linked their catalogues together in a system that allows for inter-library loans.
Companies such as Ebscohost and Silverplatter that provided journal information on CD-ROM format have now created online databases with the same information. Universities like RAU and Wits subscribe to these and restrict access to these sites to university students only either by passwords or by restricting access to IP addresses (computer equipment’s unique number in a network) on the campus. At Wits University they are taking the process a step further by also digitising their own material for such things as course reserves or manuscripts.
As with schools and public libraries, universities use the Internet as a tool that will work hand-in-hand with the traditional library. To teach people to take advantage of its electronic information Wits has initiated what, in the words of its Internet site, is called “the electronic classroom”.
Aimed at student and teacher alike, in the words of their website, it “provides fascinating insight into modern information retrieval techniques”. New students are also encouraged to familiarise themselves with the workings of a computer through short courses held by the computer department.
All in all it can be seen that libraries are aware of the Internet as a new medium or source of information.
The task ahead for libraries lies in unifying current legacy systems, digitising relevant existing material and educating people to be able to exploit the medium. To filter out the “noise” of the Internet, libraries are creating websites with links to material they have found to be factual and reliable as well as their own.
Libraries have been and will remain social spaces with an emphasis on human interaction and exchange of knowledge. The wonderful tool that is the Internet will not by itself encourage a reading culture, but it will serve as another point where information can be retrieved.