With the discovery of the new field of nanotechnology, the science of building and manipulating assemblies of atoms only a nanometer (a billionth of a meter) in size, hard drives as big as postage stamps can store the entire library collection from books and periodicals to other types of collection. We owe them to the two European scientists, Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg, who won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics.¹ The commercial devices called magnetoresistance has been produced as early as 1997! “The MP3 and iPod industry would not have existed without this discovery,” as Börje Johansson, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy, said, according to The Associated Press. ²
These devices will surely play important role in building and preserving all the materials without any worries that the library collection will be endangered or stolen. For the library is the main computer of knowledge; can eradicate illiteracy, in other words, people’s university; place for people to think, speak and monument to build civilized nations; makes people understand the situations to make better decisions; symbol of what democracy is³; a place of great heritage; prevents people to be left behind; a place to capture new ideas and new places; gives comfort and joy in ones life; as well as bridges the gap among nations. As far as financial constraints and library space are concerned, the invention of these iPods and MP3 are very timely to solve the problems of library management. Not only that. The invention will help in saving Mother Earth and the ozone layers. For by using these gadgets, more countries or places will use lesser papers since papers come from trees.
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²http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/world/10nobel.html?ref=todayspaper ³Sally Reed, “What’s a library for nowadays?” (From her speech during the 2007 Association for Rural and Small Libraries Conference, September 26-28, 200).