Law Commons^™

Libraries As Doppelgängers: A Meditation On Collection Development, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Debates about the balance between electronic and paper resouces typically employ points on economics or patron access. That line of argument can be shown to depend upon an understanding of libraries as reducible to their contents. After showing that this premise must be discarded as logically inconsistent with the broader assertions made in favor of digital materials, the question is posed as to what qualities of libraries are not reducible to the materials they contain. The attractiveness of digital content, even if conclusive from a merely economic perspective, may still founder on the intrinsic properties of library qua "library."

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