Dust and Age, or Knowledge and Power?
Are Libraries Still Useful in a Digital World?
Photos by Tomas Schetzel
All college students know the library as the place to go — when grades are on the line, when a 300 page assignment needs to be completed in four hours, or as a place to share their intellectual pain on Snapchat. But how useful is the library with its many dusty books, when similar information is just a few keystrokes away?
As it turns out, the Von Canon Library on Southern Virginia University campus has been keeping the digital age in mind with voncanon.svu.edu. The site gives students access to not only over 100,000 hard copy books in the Von Canon library but also over 250,000 ebooks and millions of digitized articles that can be accessed at any time on or off campus.
According to Melissa Davis, Educational Resources Librarian at Southern Virginia, the most important fact to remember is that there are “three wonderful librarians who are ready to help search and direct you to the resources you need for the paper or project that you are working on.”
The resources that students have access to does not stop with the Von Canon. Southern Virginia has a consortium with both the libraries of the Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University, which gives students unlimited access to the resources of both institutions and only requires a student ID. There is even a free shuttle between schools for students to go get their materials. The Von Canon also allows for students to place an order to borrow materials from universities across the country through inter-library loans.
Some students may argue that they find it easier to just use a search engine for their research. However, search engines are only able to show sites and materials which are free and accessible to the public. The library allows students to access copyrighted or otherwise costly material for free.
Another advantage of utilizing library search capabilities is that the majority of the texts provided are peer reviewed, academic materials. This means that students can be sure the sources are trustworthy.
A unique aspect of the library that students can explore is the rare books archive. Within the last five years this archive has gone from a cluttered, cramped, glorified storage room to housing a fine collection of rare texts such as newspapers of the 1969 moon landing and a Gutenberg Bible. According to Davis, it also contains the second largest collection of Latter-day Saint literature east of the Mississippi River, the largest being contained at Harvard University.
“We have literally created something from nothing here,” Melissa explained about the rare books archive. “We are always getting new material that needs to be catalogued.” She also said about her own feelings of the archive, “It’s less about just books and more about preserving the information.”
The library is far more than a study space. It is a repository of information. It is one of the most important tools in the arsenal of a college student. As the internet reaches new heights, the Von Canon Library is growing to meet it, pushing away the stereotypes of dusty old books as it does so.
