Library Science: Academic Users Changing in 21 Century (Essay Sample)

Library Science
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Libraries have remained a product of change over the years. This is because of the different advancements made in history over the years. Different generations have had different library systems and librarians have always been faced with different challenges when going about their businesses. Right now, despite all these technological advancements in history, the librarians are faced with some kind of challenges. For example, right now, with the current library system, librarians have had to experience transitioning from analogue to digital form of storing and lending of books. Even though this system is efficient and tries to incorporate all technological advancements like the use of computers, the librarians are still left with a couple of challenges. Just like the olden days, when librarians were storing books in the form of scrolls and papyrus reeds, the librarians have had to be ready to adapt to change. Change might be effected by different factors such as different political environment, technological advancements, demographic changes, that is the age of the library users is low compared to those olden times, civilization and development of better and larger libraries. All these are some of the factors that facilitate librarians to always be ready for a change in their functioning and work.
With the current day and age, more people are enrolling in institutions of higher learning than ever before. Young people are graduating straight from high schools into the different colleges and universities. These people are tech-savvy and with the advancements in the library systems, these young people do not experience a hard time locating books and other reading materials in the library. However, there is an emerging trend whereby people are first seeking for jobs and other means so as to sustain their livelihood and then later go to colleges and institutions of higher learning at a much later time. These people are not used to the complex advanced library systems and must,therefore, be guided through. Orientation may be a good idea but it does not work across all these people. However, a majority of these people prefer the website online libraries because of their busy schedules. These people may actually write a thesis report or a scholarly article purely based on the website content. Because of this, a majority of the universities and colleges libraries have formed online academic databases where they form their online library content. This is despite the fact that visiting the library may prove to be much better than simply keying some web content. Not all books can be posted online and it may actually take a real visit to the library to gain access to some of these books (Gilton, 2012).
The experiences that a library encounter may have may also deter one from ever visiting the school library ever again. One may have a hard time looking for a book and eventually waste a lot of time looking for a book that he or she may have simply keyed in some words on the internet and gained access to the book. These people who go to colleges later may exercise impatience and as a result, they may opt for the online sources as primary sources for their research projects. With the evolution of search engines such as Google, Bing, Ask, research work is simply a click away. This might be disastrous since it might limit the students from the actual information that might have been present on books. Search engines are more popular than physical libraries. Online libraries are even more popular than the physical libraries. Amajority of these students have some form of familiarity with the various search engines available and this then begs the question, have we really lost the meaning of our school libraries? As it turns out, a while back, the library was the center of information for research and referral of academic content in the schools. Nowadays, the library has been left to the few who actually go to refer to the reference books in our libraries (Hardy, 2010).
The popularity of these search engines has been facilitated by some factors such as friends, links from other electronic sources, teachers, and the media. This reduces the number of library users to a greater extent than before. Students pursuing courses involved with theoretical works such as historical courses may fall victim to these online sources and links. However, there are those students who pursue more technical courses such as mathematics and engineering courses may spend a lot of time in the libraries. The problem is that majority of these older college students may choose some technical courses like economics and commerce courses that are easily accessible on the internet in form the of PDFs and website contents and online libraries.
The use of journals has also changed the way people perceive the use of libraries should be. These journals are easily accessible through the databases of the academic libraries and this saves time and money by eliminating the need of travelling to the actual libraries to access information. These journals have efficient and reliable information regarding any topic one wishes to research. As we have earlier seen, these people are short of time and they need to save as much time as possible. These journals facilitate the research projects of numerous students and they provide proper information regarding almost any topic that one wishes to research about.
Academic libraries have also changed their way of operations to more efficient and precise services. This is done in a bid to attract more students int...