The breakup of the old library, Part 2
The second crack in the century-long stability of American libraries began to arrive in the 1980s: Online databases.
These databases vastly expanded patron access to periodicals without requiring an equally vast building program. The percentage of library collection budgets spent on these databases has steadily increased during the last 30 years.
They also continued the breakup of the old, stable model of how libraries worked:
- Databases did not remain as physical items housed within and controlled by the library (remember CD-ROM towers?). To access most databases, patrons no longer even have to go to the library.
- Databases were not stable. Vendors often added and dropped titles, complicating efforts to maintain the accuracy of the catalog.
- Libraries did not control database finding aids. Each database had its own interface and thesaurus (and interfaces sometimes changed). Librarians had trouble maintaining mastery of all of them (if they had achieved that mastery to begin with).
Automated card catalogs and online databases were two notable cracks in the old library bottom line: That the library controlled everything within the library. The third and final crack, though, would be the one that finally brought the structure down.