The Lied Library article was an interesting one that took many concerns and issues that libraries and archives face and explained how one library, Lied Library for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, was able to cope with the ever expanding technologies.
More technologies and updates to the computers were among the most productive things that the library was able to do to help their library expand. Granted, this article is very dated, from 2005, the concept of expanding on existing and continuing technology is a concept that both archives and libraries struggle with today. This article was a glance at how one university library was able to not only keep up, but to strive in the conditions of an ever-advancing technological world.
The entire time of reading the article I kept thinking to myself, "what about how technology has advanced from the time this article was published?" While this article doesn't answer that question regarding current technology, but it does provide insight that the Lied Library would continue to advance with the technology for their patrons.
The two digitizing articles, specifically the one regarding the Google Books Project, is something that greatly interests me. As someone who watched Google and the World Brain, the idea of having Google digitize all the books is one that has both pros and cons. While digitizing books for academic use is indeed useful for studies, it was essential for my history undergraduate work, the idea of having books protected by copyright on the web for free "fair use" is something that is unsettling. The article makes a good point that if something isn't "accessible from the keyboard, it might as well not exist," a book, and an author is something that needs to exist. The content of books will still exist, regardless of technologies, but the creators need to be credited for their work, and with Google's project the authors were not getting compensated.
As someone who is entering the information technologies and sciences field, digitization is something that will be a cornerstone in the near future. How it will affect it is still to be determined. Whether it is authors and publishers fighting and winning against Google, or Google and other companies incorporating the technology so much that it is futile to resist, is yet to be seen (at least in my mind).
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