Internet Blamed for Sharp Drop in Library Book Borrowing
On our blog, you'll notice the link to our LibraryThing page. We introduced this in August 2007. As you'll recall from previous posts, those within the SBDC can use this site to identify books from our collection that are available for borrowing. It's not resulted in a lot of loan requests, but I'm not surprised. I thought of this while reading this article . Since our inception, the Research Network's acquisitions policy has assumed that information required by our clients would be more palatable in bite-sized portions, rather than full-course meals found in lengthy books. If you look at the copyright dates for the books on our LibraryThing page, you'll notice a pretty scattered range of dates. I purchase circulating books rather haphazardly. Reference materials, however, dominate what we buy on a regular basis. Our budget - like anyone's - is finite, and I'd rather spend it on the things that a greater majority of our clients would need. So that...