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Originally Posted by wizwor
I hope you didn't pay much for that training. I mastered the card catalog and guide to periodic literature in 5th grade. I don't keep track, but I would guess that my success rate in finding answers on the internet is > 90%.
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If you just want basic answers to questions, sure, it's probably all online. But you said "research" not "general information about a topic." Research often requires access to theses, primary source materials, genealogical records, local histories, things that are out-of-print, unpublished autobiographies and letters that have been given to a specific institution, articles that have been published in peer-reviewed publications, back issues of newspapers and periodicals, and that's just things off the top of my head that I've helped patrons find and/or have borrowed from other libraries on their behalf. Much of that isn't available online, and often when it is, it's either not affordable or requires some sort of institutional membership to access.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizwor
I think you need to sit in a library and interview the visitors. Your impoverished strawman is not spending evenings in the public library to improve himself. The patrons are checking out movies and video games for nada.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry_Y
That's what I mostly see at mine.
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So the hell what? Many of the people who check out library books are probably just doing it for basic entertainment too, and nobody seems to find that problematic. Is it just because they're not books that entertainment media is inappropriate for a library?