Fool's Gold Why The Internet Is No Substitute for a Library by Mark Y. Herring, McFarland and Company, North Carolina, c2007

Fool's Gold Why The Internet Is No Substitute for a Library by Mark Y. Herring, McFarland and Company, North Carolina, c2007

This book provides clear arguments to why the internet and also ebooks are no substitute for a physical library.

He argues against the uncluttered, unauthoritative, often inaccurate nature of the information made available on the internet. Mark Y. Herring abhors internet pornography, spam, the presence of hate sites, and plagiarism rampant on the web.

There are reminders that internet sites disappear quickly; a phenomenon called link rot and are not cited or footnoted like in books. There is an excellent set of footnotes at the back of the book with extensive, often ironic commentary.

Some of the most striking ideas were that Wikipedia is a secondary source; copyright has not been sorted by Google and the best electronic information is still in propietary databases.

I do not agree with some of his points,especially the ones on book, this book was written in 2007, so it was just before the advent of the Kindle and the expansion of many of the archives of free information on the web like wikimedia.

Also, his statements about the pure decline of reading because of the internet are starting to change. People have become much more aware of the decline in reading. This may be in part because of books like this. This is a link to the latest National Endowment for the Arts study
http://www.arts.gov/news/news09/ReadingonRise.html

This book was ironic and coherent; a strong statement against web evangelism. It gives solid arguments on why we should keep a physical library and not just turn everything over to the internet.

Mark Y. Herring, the author, is the Dean of Library Services at the Dacus Library, Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He has written extensively for Library Journal and other academic publications.