Re: [LM_NET] Do we really need magazines? No, but we still WANT them.

[Shonda Brisco <sbrisco@GMAIL.COM>]

Following Jeff's comments, I have to agree that it still important that we
have some of those print journals in our "stacks" (dungeons or closets)
because they ARE still important to the classroom instructional purposes.

Like Jeff, I've also written articles that have become digitalized contents
within the databases, and some of those articles contain errors in the
electronic formats.  This is annoying for me because I know what I wrote and
it's there in my print copy...but who knows what others are thinking when
they read the electronic format of my article?

Finally,....just recently I became heavily engrossed in a writing assignment
that involves science databases.  During this time an interesting request
came to me from one of my science teachers who desperately needed an article
from a journal dated 5 years earlier.

I found the journal within several databases...BUT....she also wanted the
wonderful illustrations and diagrams that were in the print journal.  After
reviewing several different databases, I discovered that most failed to
provide an important aspect for my teacher.... the .pdf of the journal's
article for use by the teacher!  Instead, we have a clean copy of an HTML
file that can be accessed by thousands, but no copy of the original document
from the printed source.

Those items (the "bells and whistles") are not available in many databases.
While we do have databases with videos, audios, basic diagrams of scientific
elements, and illustrations that can be used over and over again as examples
in the classroom....the actual article from a journal (in a .pdf format)
which contains the illustrations, photographs, or diagrams are forgotten in
many databases.  If they were important enough for the printed page, then
why are they absent from the database copy? (I know the reasons....I'm
merely questioning the philosophy of online access.)

Please RE-consider what you're tossing before you decide that everything is
"already online, so we don't need it anymore"....because much of
the information (visually) may be lost between the paper and the electronic
formats...and for many, that's the important part.

~Shonda



Shonda Brisco, MLIS
Technology Librarian /
Independent Library Consultant
Fort Worth, Texas
sbrisco@gmail.com

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