Dr.
Rubhi Elayan, Chairman of Jordan Library Association, said that the Department
of Antiquities, established in 1950, is the oldest specialized library in
Jordan.
During
a lecture entitled “Libraries and their cultural role in the era of
globalization” and given in front of the Department of Educational Sciences
students, Dr. Elayan pointed out that the emergence of virtual libraries on the
Internet brought down a spatial component of the definition of library. The
student and the researcher can carry his/her personal library on his/her mobile
phone or on his/her mobile memory.
Moreover,
Dr. Elayan reviewed the types of libraries, their objectives, their functions,
their components and the reasons of the differences between them and the impact
of technology in the development of the concept of library as well as the
cultural role that they play in the lives of pioneers and researchers. He also
devoted a significant part in which he spoke about the different roles of the
library.
Dr.
Elayan alerted about the need to differentiate between two types of library; specialized
libraries and private libraries. A specialized library is a library that comprises
books and references for specific topic such as medicine, engineering or
folklore, while a private library may comprise various books in many fields,
yet these books belong to an individual or an author that collects his/her
books in that library.
The
moderator of the University of Petra, Dr. Maram Abu Nadi, noted that the globalization
of libraries sheds responsibility on the researcher and the reader who has
become cautious in his/her selection of books published on the Internet, adding
that: “Whoever will lead the human race will know how to read. Regardless of the
types and sources of knowledge and libraries, it is necessary to know the
selection of knowledge, whether it is from traditional or non-traditional
sources. Thus, our goal is to distinguish from the wheat and what may optimize
us as individuals to differentiate ourselves from the others so as not to fall
into the trap of globalization."