eLibrary

Will the library become obsolete? With the recent development of online sites like eLibrary (which, ironically, the Cincinnati Library runs off their database) being offered for free to college students, it's a definite possibility. As yet, they don't have comprehensive book collection like the Cincinnati Library, but this site is most definitely Covington Public library standard. The appeal is that you don't have to leave your room to do extensive research, which you could only do at a very large library. This challenges that problem of the internet searches that you can find something if you know what your looking for but not if you don't know what your looking for because eLibrary functions in much the same way as a real library does with keywords and such. And, the only component that's missing is the librarian, who can be very helpful (only in person, they are really rude phone people) in finding what your looking for if you only have a vague idea. So, like all other internet processes, the disembodiment is the problem and the hurdle to gaining a truly successful search engine. Libraries have become obsolete to most college students who can use proquest, Ebsco host (which I originally thought was a brand of cookie and so wondered for many months why the school was supporting a brand name) and eLibrary. However, for those who are in rhetoric related professions or just love books, the library will never become obsolete. I think Borgmann might have even considered the library a focal practice at least for people who aren't already jaded by the internet. When you go to the Cincinnati Library (downtown) it's a meeting place for the community with events like poetry slams, movie night, book clubs etc... It's a place for an individual to feel in touch with the feeling and smell of books (body), to stretch one's mind to area unknown (mind), and to feel a spirit of times past (soul), all as you stand there lost on the second floor, giving money to hobos, staring in disbelief as a guy looks at pornography on a computer, and already having passed a street gang of kids, who have all lost out on the experience. It just seems like, every person is working so hard to get to the end of a book or a research paper and they completely miss the best experience that the research paper gives, not of writing the paper itself (which can be enjoyable...on occasion) but getting lost in the library, finding book completely unexpected, and then as you sit in middle of aisle blocking no one's way because you're in some obscure section, you find pencil marks or cheeto finger marks and say, "Hey, somebody else read this. That's so cool." That experience is priceless and whether or not some human computer is developed, people who aren't completely lazy or impatient, won't find that enveloping feeling as when they open a library book. (Hopefully that was more realistic and less sentimental...sentimentality is as funny as a Cooper novel)