356 Part 4 Public Speaking
THINK
ABOUT
THIS❶ Primary sources are
of particular importance
to historians, who rely
on firsthand accounts of
events and phenomena
to gain understanding of
a particular period. What
kinds of primary sources
would be helpful when
researching your home-
town’s history? How might
they be used in a speech?
❷ Some see the digitizing
of content as great way to
level the intellectual play-
ing field. But how level is
it? Google Books is free,
but many archives are not,
and many Americans still
don’t have access to the
Internet at home. How can
access be further democ-
ratized? Should it be?
❸ With so much informa-
tion going digital, what is
your opinion on the role of
brick-and-mortar libraries
today? Do you think they
are more important or less
important than they once
were? What kind of help
can librarians provide?The Library in the Sky
“Funny how something that used to be such a commonplace part of research
now seems like a special occasion” (Romans, 2011, para. 2). So says a vet-
eran scholar regarding a trip to the library, something he made a pact with
himself to do at least once a week in order to supplement his mostly online
research with older but important literature.
Wandering the stacks at the library does have a certain romantic feel to it.
But is it practical? The digitizing of books, newspapers, and journals has ef-
fectively removed the walls between centuries of content and end users. If, for
example, you want to write an informative speech on the history of your home-
town, you could quickly enter the name of your town into any number of digital
archives and access a wealth of news articles and literary references to it in
major newspapers dating back several centuries (The New York Times digital
archive, for example, goes back to 1851). You might find stunning photos of
your town from the Associated Press or Corbis photo archives (you can search
them for free). The Library of Congress Archive has an ever-growing online col-
lection, where you might find photos, posters, letters, and artifacts. And you’ll
be able to search through more books than any brick-and-mortar library could
possibly hold, thanks to a somewhat controversial project started by Google.
The Google Books Library Project, which aims to “make it easier for people
to find relevant books—specifically, books they wouldn’t find any other way
such as those that are out of print,” offers searchable digital scans of millions of
books through partnerships with major public and university libraries around the
world (https://www.google.com/googlebooks/library/). For books in copyright,
Google will provide links to sources you can purchase them from, as well as
libraries from which you can borrow. Books no longer in copyright (most books
more than ninety years old are in the public domain) can be viewed in full; you
even can download a pdf of the entire book. So if a writer stumbled through your
town on the way to the California gold rush in 1849 and wrote about it in a novel,
a poem, or work of nonfiction, you can find out what he or she thought about it.
Google Books remains somewhat controversial: a class-action lawsuit
on behalf of copyright holders, in fact, is pending (Bosman, 2013). But for re-
searchers—or anyone who is just a little intellectually curious, really—there is
no denying that the ability to access primary sources quickly, from anywhere,
and often for free opens new doors of discovery and allows even the most
casual Web surfer to stumble onto texts that were out of reach, or perhaps
just languishing unnoticed on library shelves, for decades.
It is interesting to note, however, that old-fashioned, brick-and-mortar
libraries, although undergoing tremendous changes in terms of the way they
house and deliver information, remain a crucial link in offering access to all
kinds of intellectual property. A recent survey by Pew Research revealed that
even as they embrace new technologies, Americans still look to public librar-
ies for their casual reading and information needs. More than three-quarters
of those surveyed felt that library services like book lending, reference librar-
ians, and access to computers and the Internet were “very important.” It
seems that, even as armchair research becomes the norm, we still love that
feeling of wandering the stacks.WIREDFORCOMMUNICATION