Carnegie Mellon has for years already been building its own “bookless library”: “For the nearly 15 years I’ve been in the Carnegie Mellon Libraries, we’ve been working hard to provide the campus with what I think is a very realistic view of the library of the future. We are working towards a hybrid of an online and paper-based library,” computer science librarian Missy Harvey explained.
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The rarity of many works in the Posner Memorial Collection highlights the advantages of the increased accessibility and longevity of electronic republishing. “Rare books [can be] scanned and delivered via the World Wide Web to scholars in places such as Argentina and Germany who could not visit the books,” Mary Catharine Johnsen, the special collections and design librarian, said. “Electronic versions save wear and tear on using the physical book, which is important if you are a book from 1755 and your leather spine is dry and cracking.”
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Johnsen also said that even in successful scans of books to electronic formats, the many subtleties in a book’s presentation and metadata may be lost in an online medium. “For literature students, you really want to see the original format of the work as received by its first public. Was it a fancy coffee-table book? Was it a cheap paperback or flimsy pamphlet? Was it a colorful book to tempt you in a Victorian train station or an airport bookstall?”
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