In an age where digital archives and online books are more accessible, it has become increasingly rare to see students hunched over a stack of books in a campus library. The University of Michigan libraries — Shapiro Undergraduate Library, Hatcher Graduate Library, Taubman Health Sciences Library and the Arts, Architecture and Engineering Library — have rapidly evolved to provide a myriad of resources beyond just supplying books.
The support libraries offer to researchers has evolved over the decades. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Scott Dennis, U-M Librarian for philosophy, general reference and core electronic resources, said libraries have adapted to remain a key role in research throughout his career, which began in 1987. He emphasized the importance of the University’s online research guides.
“I’m also referring (researchers) sometimes to the online research guides that we create at the library, which are lists with links to particular resources that can be useful for a given field or topic,” Dennis said. “We create these research guides ourselves, drawing on all the research, and the resources that the library is licensing.”
Studies show many researchers are shifting away from in-person libraries to the use of online databases. Dennis said when a student or researcher accesses a resource online that requires the use of university credentials, that resource is part of the online library.
“The main thing I’m doing is referring people to good databases that are not free on the web, and you can only get to them if you are a subscriber or if you are at an institution like the University,” said Dennis. “The library pays for everyone at the institution to have access to these databases, and a lot of people don’t realize that.”
Even as resources become more easily available to researchers as they continue to move online, Dennis said many researchers are unaware of the extent of resources available to them.
“We often have people who don’t realize what we have, and it’s so surprising,” said Dennis. “I so often encounter not only students, but faculty, who say, ‘I wish I’d known this was available to me two years ago’.”
Because U-M community members often overlook the library’s resources, librarians have had to take an additional role as marketers to make sure their resources are utilized. Dennis said librarians encourage students and researchers to regularly review library web pages, as they provide important information on research tools that can support their work.
“What we really try to encourage is that students realize that the libraries are here and to come take a look, to look at the research guides, to look at the catalog, and to even look at a database they’ve used before as it may have more stuff.”
Karin Rand, a research lab specialist in the Classen Lab of the ecology and evolutionary biology department, told The Daily some researchers are unaware that libraries have made technological advances and that online databases can be more efficient than in-person libraries.
“In this digital age, it is not effective to spend time (finding) a paper copy of a journal and (flipping) through it,” Rand said. “You can find 10 articles online and just pull from them, different pieces that you want and scroll to find their methods.”
Despite the growing emphasis on digital tools, Rackham student Aadia Moseley-McCloud told The Daily physical books have aided her with information for her thesis.
“I have a bunch of books I’ve gotten from my (principal investigator) that I look through from time to time,” McCloud said. “The books are really good for basic stuff in terms of statistics and experimental design.”
McCloud also said there were many benefits to physical libraries and articles as opposed to online platforms and that there is a benefit to the physical media provided by libraries.
“I think that information kind of gets lost in translation of transitioning over from a physical place to being online,” McCloud said. “Sometimes if you actually go to a library, especially to a place that has a lot of history, you can find things that you wouldn’t normally be able to find online.
Daily Staff Contributor Sara Garcia can be reached atsarajuli@umich.edu.
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