The dibrary

This article from The Korea Times introduces Seoul’s new National Digital Library. Claiming to be the first such repository in the world, the new 8-story building will offer only digital content to users via a stunning number of computer terminals, laptops and televisions. Patrons can access existing digital information, or use the video and audio recording studios available at the library to create and edit their own digital content and add it to the internet. The building has special facilities to welcome people with disabilities and a zone specifically designed to allow foreign visitors a favourable experience.

This all sounds amazing and I would love to go see it. But, I think I’m missing something. Isn’t the point of digital content that you can access it anywhere? At home for example, in your pyjamas, at midnight? Doesn’t digital access free you from the physical space of the library? Isn’t this a good thing? Why build, or visit, a library whose main holdings can be accessed from the comfort of your own home? (And yes, I know that some material can’t be made available over the web due to IPR and other reasons, but my line of reasoning remains).

More to the point, why spend what must amount to huge amounts of money to do this? My experience of libraries is that there's never enough money to pay for new acquisitions, decent pay, enough staff to retrieve and re-shelve material, extra opening hours, cataloguing backlogs, etc. Not to mention the expanding costs of creating and preserving digital material itself. Running a national library is an expensive undertaking.

Surely there are better areas where this money could be directed? And if you have the space to build a new building, why devote it entirely to digital stuff?

I believe The British Library has plans for a dilibrary (as the article in the Korea Times labelled it). According to the minutes, available on the BL webpages, a proposal was considered by the Library Board when it met in May.

I’m interested to see how successful the Seoul library is. Although sceptical about its use value, and suspecting the money could’ve been directed toward other, more deserving areas, I do hope it encourages people to visit the, or a, library, whether in person or on-line.