10 Reasons for a Library:

10 REASONS WHY THE INTERNET
IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A LIBRARY

1. Not Everything Is on the Internet. You’d think so with a billion pages, but no. Only about 8% of all journals and even a smaller fraction of books are on the web.

2. The Needle (Your Search) in the Haystack (the Web). No matter which search engine you use, you can drown in the web’s ocean of materials trying to find the right answer because only about 17% of the search results will apply to your question. Search engines are not regularly updated, so you may not be getting current data.

3. Quality Control Doesn’t Exist. Amid all the great web-based information, lurks a kook with a conspiracy theory and a pornographer with a camera. Abandoned sites, urban legends spouted as truth, and advertising, advertising, advertising.

4. What You Don’t Know Really Does Hurt You. About 70% of the Web is "hidden" – accessible with passwords only (for the select few).

5. States Can Now Buy One Book and Distribute to Every Library on the Web. Not! Copyright restrictions make only a couple of thousand titles available this way. Most vendors offer the book to only one user at a time, too, so there may be a long waiting list for the book you want today.

6. Hey, Bud, What About E-Books? Reading on any e-reader is a chore. The technology will doubtless improve, but it’s still more than a generation away.

7. Aren’t There Library-less Universities Now? No. Institutions that tried to open with paperless libraries, quickly built traditional ones because books they needed weren’t available on the Internet.

8. But a Virtual State Library Would Work, Right? Work at bankrupting the state! Digitizing the number of books for an average sized state library would cost tens of millions of dollars just in copyright releases.

9. The Internet: A Mile Wide, an Inch (or Less) Deep. Most of what’s on the Internet is ONLY ABOUT 15 YEARS OLD. If you want more, you must have a full-service library.

10. The Internet is Everywhere but Books are Portable. Try curling up by the fire with a laptop, or stopping by the woods on a snowy evening with a handheld. The future may bring this, but for now the vast majority of readers – even online readers – still want books. Try reading with a hot laptop on your lap (Hee, Hee)! Bring new meaning to hot, sizzling novel.

This list is adapted from Mark Herring's 10 Reasons Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library, which originally appeared in American Libraries, April 2001, p. 76–78.