Last week I was engaged in reading one of our class articles about the sad state of library use among students. In particular, this one article said, students no longer come to the library to check out books, but rather rely on whatever information they can access from the comfort of their personal computer. How sad, I agreed, tsk-tsking and shaking my head.
And then I thought: When was the last time I checked out a book from a university library?
Suddenly I was one of those students, reclining in my Principle of Least Effort barcalounger, berrypicking full-text articles and whatever information Google could return on its first page of results. Of course, my ‘home’ library is now a five-hour drive away, and my local university library does not offer me alumni privileges (I must fill out a form, pay a fee, and wait several weeks for it to be processed, and then I must renew this status every three months). But I remember enough about the ‘bad old days’ of trudging to the library to xerox articles that every time I sit on my comfy sofa and immediately access a crucial article in full text, I want to shout “YES!!!”
This convenience, it is a wonderful thing, I must say. But does it make me a bad library user? 😦
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