Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 13:08:30 GMT
Subject: Digital Disney Stys
From: jya-AT-pipeline.com (John Young)


   Financial Times, June 10, 1996, p. 11. 
 
 
   NY learns there's more to books 
 
   Public libraries are undergoing a digital transformation, 
   says Victoria Griffith 
 
 
   A visit to the new Science, Industry and Business Library 
   in Manhattan, admirers say, is a step into the library of 
   the future. 
 
   Touch-screen kiosks have replaced the traditional 
   information desk at the entrance to the building, which 
   used to house the turn-of-the-century B Altman department 
   store on the corner of Madison Avenue and 34th Street. In 
   the reading room, dozens of people are plugged into the 
   Internet; others are using CD-Roms. On the lower floor, an 
   instructor teaches a packed class how to navigate in 
   cyberspace. Seventy computers in the electronic information 
   centre pump out data on everything from US exports of dolls 
   -- "with or without clothes" -- to a demographic profile of 
   Shanghai. 
 
   According to the architects, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates 
   of New York: "The newly renovated interior reinforces 
   SIBL's image as a 'library without walls', a transparent 
   membrane through which information and resources flow 
   freely between the library, international business and 
   research communities, and the public." 
 
   In fact, many see the new facility as the library prototype 
   of the digital age. Since it opened last month, SIBL, a 
   branch of the New York public library, one of the largest 
   in the world, has received visiting librarians from nearly 
   30 countries. 
 
   "The French have spent $1.6bn on a new library and the 
   British more than $500m, but none of them offer the 
   Internet access people can get here," says Paul LeClerc, 
   president of the New York public library. 
 
   Public libraries are undergoing a transformation. Visions 
   of the future range from complete extinction of today's 
   libraries to super-libraries serving global citizens. 
 
   In an effort to keep up with the times, the world's largest 
   libraries are rushing to make at least some of their 
   material available online. Dreamers hope that a researcher 
   in Saudi Arabia, say, may soon be able to enter the New 
   York public library in cyberspace and download a volume. 
 
   "People ask if there will still be the need for a physical 
   facility if everyone can plug into a virtual library," says 
   Betty Turock, president of the American Library 
   Association. 
 
   SIBL is one of the most advanced public libraries to open 
   in recent years, and its high-tech systems are attracting 
   plenty of attention. Yet what may be most instructive is 
   what it retains in terms of traditional -- physical -- 
   library facilities as what it eliminates. 
 
   Financed by corporate and private donations as well as 
   state and local funds, SIBL is not an ephemeral cyber- 
   construction but a solid building. Even its collection of 
   books is far from virtual, occupying five floors. 
 
   Indeed, LeClerc believes that the concept of a truly 
   virtual library -- one with no physical existence -- will 
   remain a near-fantasy for some time. Publishing is an 
   industry interested in making profits, he says. "Access for 
   all would create a problem because if everyone could 
   [download] a book for free, why buy it? Of course, you 
   could institute a fee system to compensate wrlters, but 
   that would defeat the purpose of a public library -- to 
   provide access to information free of charge." 
 
   Despite cyberspace, physical copies of books and 
   periodicals still serve a purpose. Although much of its 
   information is available electronically, the New York 
   public library system estimates that two-thirds of SIBL 
   users at any moment are searching for original hard copies 
   of texts. 
 
   There are still things that are very time-consuming to  
   transfer to computers, such as photographs and 
   illustrations," says Bill Kenny, a spokesperson for the 
   library. 
 
   Cost is also a concern for public libraries hoping to go 
   digital. While many libraries around the world are making 
   some of their material available on the Internet, complete 
   transition would entail massive expense. 
 
   "Who's going to pay for us to transfer the 52m items we 
   have at the New York public library to computers?" LeClerc 
   asks. "That would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and 
   you have to ask what the benefit to US taxpayers is that 
   someone in Buenos Aires can take out a New York city 
   library book on the Net." 
 
   The people who created SIBL pondered long and hard whether 
   to provide an e-mail service. In the end, they decided not 
   to. 
 
   "It would have been unworkable," says Kenny. "People would 
   have been in here all day sending and receiving messages, 
   and we would have been overwhelmed. Anyway, it's not really 
   the point of a library to provide telecommunications 
   services." However, the library helps users set up their 
   own home pages on the Net. 
 
   Despite the barriers to virtuality, the digital revolution 
   is gradually changing traditional libraries into multimedia 
   operations. Readers must still visit SIBL in person to take 
   out a book. But the library provides 24-hour online access 
   to what used to be known as its card catalogues. And it is 
   busily scaning in some material to offer over the Internet. 
   In turn, the retrieval of statistics has been greatly 
   simplified. No one has to struggle laboriously with 
   monstrous volumes any more. Instead, a simple computer 
   search puts statistics instantly on-screen. 
 
   To improve its access to cyberspace, the library is phasing 
   in plenty of equipment so that users can tap into the 
   Internet. 
 
   "I'm here because I want to get on the Internet," said 
   Daniel Mironchuk, a New York consultant doing research at 
   the library. "First they give you a free class, and then 
   they let you plug into it for nothing. Where else can you 
   get that?" Another user said he liked to use the Internet 
   at the library because it afforded him virtual anonymity. 
 
   SIBL doesn't look or feel like a traditional library. 
 
   "Flexibility was a key part of the design because 
   information technology can be expected to change 
   dramatically over the next few decades," says architect 
   Charles Gwathmey. "We put in plenty of room for new 
   conduits so you don't have to redo the design every time 
   you want to make some changes." 
 
   That SIBL will change -- and change again -- seems 
   inevitable. For now, it looks impressive. Yet cyberspace 
   may turn public libraries into dinosaurs -- or even 
   stranger creatures. The future of the library of the future 
   is impossible to foretell. 
 
   [Photo] Prototype of the digital age: New York's Science, 
   Industry and Business library has attracted vistiors from 
   all over the world. 
 
   [End] 
 
   To see photo: 
 
      http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/sibl.jpg 
 
---------- 
 
After pigging out at CompUSA last week, we waddled over to the 
SIBL, eager to crap on it. But it turned out to be fabulous, 
machinic-wise if architecturally sclerotic. And teeming with 
entranced people at the bountiful array of latest work 
stations. We were happy as pigs in shit and spent much longer 
than planned wallowing in the virtual sty. In a few days we'll 
up-put some digital pix of it. 
 
Gwathmey-Siegel's design is pre-aged, pseudo-machinic Cooper- 
Mechano, that looks Calvin-tucked and -stretched in reality as 
in the firm's widely-cast deathly-still photos. 
 
Still, for future visitors and locals, it provides a 
diverting, educative play-with in this ever-shittier Cultural 
and Financial and Infotainment Peurile-Ideas Sewer of the 
Galaxy -- Disney's new Hollywood fantasy make-over set. 
 
Disney plans to open its SIXTH NYC puerile-project in Harlem, 
(across the street from our mutual subscriber's under-funded, 
day care center) to pay bribe for the greasy approvals of the 
Times Square bonanza. Like Chase Bank is niggardly funding the 
day care center under duress for lousy minority loan practices 
(Mark Willis, head of Chase's community bribe program, is hubby 
of architectural historian Carol Willis). 
 
Perhaps Disney's architectural hogs will contribute pigshit 
money to help the little black children get an infotainment 
training to wipe their gleaming cyber-hog-SGIs. 
 
 
 
 


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