Page 47 - DLIS101_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SOCIETY

Library and Information Society

Notes 4.2 Use of Library

Until the advent of digital catalogs, card catalogs were the traditional method of organizing the list of
resources and their location within a large library.
Patrons may not know how to fully use the library’s resources. This can be due to some individuals’
unease in approaching a staff member. Ways in which a library’s content is displayed or accessed
may have the most impact on use. An antiquated or clumsy search system, or staff unwilling or
untrained to engage their patrons, will limit a library’s usefulness. In United States public libraries,
beginning in the 19th century, these problems drove the emergence of the library instruction
movement, which advocated library user education. One of the early leaders was John Cotton Dana.
The basic form of library instruction is generally known as information literacy.

Libraries inform their users of what materials are available in their collections and
how to access that information.

Before the computer age, this was accomplished by the card catalog — a cabinet containing many
drawers filled with index cards that identified books and other materials. In a large library, the card
catalog often filled a large room. The emergence of the Internet, however, has led to the adoption of
electronic catalog databases (often referred to as “webcats” or as online public access catalogs,
OPACs), which allow users to search the library’s holdings from any location with Internet access.
This style of catalog maintenance is compatible with new types of libraries, such as digital libraries
and distributed libraries, as well as older libraries that have been retrofitted. Electronic catalog
databases are criticized by some who believe that the old card catalog system was both easier to
navigate and allowed retention of information, by writing directly on the cards, that is lost in the
electronic systems. This argument is analogous to the debate over paper books and e-books. While
libraries have been accused of precipitously throwing out valuable information in card catalogs,
most modern ones have nonetheless made the move to electronic catalog databases. Large libraries
may be scattered within multiple buildings across a town, each having multiple floors, with multiple
rooms housing the resources across a series of shelves. Once a user has located a resource within the
catalog, they must then use navigational guidance to retrieve the resource physically; a process that
may be assisted through signage, maps, GPS systems or RFID tagging.

Finland has the highest number of registered book borrowers per capita in the
world.

Over half of Finland’s populations are registered borrowers. In the U.S., public library users have
borrowed roughly 15 books per user per year from 1856 to 1978. From 1978 to 2004, book circulation
per user declined approximately 50%. The growth of audiovisuals circulation, estimated at 25% of
total circulation in 2004, accounts for about half of this decline.

4.3 National Library

A national library is a library specifically established by the government of a country to serve as the
preeminent repository of information for that country. Unlike public libraries, these rarely allow
citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuable, or significant works.

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