In just a couple of weeks, a new project to help digitalize John F. Kennedy’s legacy will officially be one stage closer to completion. The project, known as “Access to a Legacy,” will digitalize hundreds of thousands of documents, including audio recordings and photos, but a part of all of Kennedy’s archives.
When I heard this, I thought of the ways in which I do research for school that usually involve a standard trip to the library or media center, as it has been since well before my first days of doing research papers. Making this information public and open is a great way to give people access to information they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see without extensive research or a trip to an archive center. It means that sitting at my laptop in my dorm room, my project on John F. Kennedy can be completed without even getting up from my desk chair. While this is all very convenient and useful to people who are either interested in research or simply just curious, it seems to take away a very large part of the research project: the physical act of “searching.”
Is the physical search for information still a necessity in this digital age? Certainly looking something up on the computer is much more time-efficient than going to a library and looking through stacks of documents. Yet the classic notion of research is just that -the discovery of a piece of information in what seems like a heap of information.
This being said, what will be the future of research? Will libraries disappear? The fact that print media is being increasingly converted to digital media means a library doesn’t necessarily need to have its entire collection in print anymore. While research materials steadily become more readily available online and books are more and more often digitalized, the current concept of what a library is composed of is changing drastically. I don’t think every book will be on the Internet within the next six months, but a lack of libraries could have a big impact, at least on my own life.
This, in many ways for me, is very sad. While it was often tedious in high school to have to learn to dig through reels of old newspapers and stacks of old magazines, I learned more than how to search through those files. I remember flipping through old magazines nearby, discovering things related to my topic in the pages, and admiring the old photos from magazines which hadn’t been opened in years. In a way, it was a unique experience that took me into the past to discover more than just what I was assigned.
Digitally there is no way to replicate this experience. The Internet has no way to capture the dated magazine pages and the quality of the pictures from the past. With less of a need to understand searching through stacks of periodicals, there will be fewer people knowledgeable about large collections of media. This nuance cannot be replicated digitally.
Another major change is the amount of mobility necessary to acquire large amounts of media. With less of an active role in research, there is less strain in finding information. Will this make people less satisfied with their work? Without the toil of searching, will people view extensive research the same way they do now?
In the case of Kennedy, aside from his legacy and documents stand monuments such as Boston’s JFK library. Will places like this be relevant in the future? Places which hold a great deal of well preserved and presented artifacts with experts dedicated to learning more about them aren’t imperative for a digital library. Does this mean there will be far fewer opportunities for people to become fully versed on such collections?
A more digital world has its advantages, yet there will always be some aspects of a world on paper which will slip through the cracks. My hope for the future is that not every piece of information will enter the digital world and that some things will stay on paper like they have for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. While digitalizing everything does make research easier, it cannot replicate every aspect of a physical document.
Allison Bowler is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].
