U Texas Austin removing books from undergrad library
By mid-July, the university says, almost all of the library’s 90,000 volumes will be dispersed to other university collections to clear space for a 24-hour electronic information commons, a fast-spreading phenomenon that is transforming research and study on campuses around the country.
This article came to my attention in a posting from a professor worried about the deemphasization of books.
What concerns me more were a couple of points mentioned in the article. First:
Carole Wedge, president of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, an architecture firm in Boston that has redesigned dozens of college libraries for the computer age, said most were built “as boxes to house print collections.” The challenge, Ms. Wedge said, is to adapt them to what she called “the Barnes & Noble culture, making reading and learning a blurred experience.”
Rarely do today’s students hunt for a book in the stacks, she said. Now they go online and may end up with a book, but also a DVD or other medium. But, she said, “it’s unlikely there will be libraries without books for a long time.”
Librarians are big supporters of this trend.
I’m a huge fan of the changes happening in libraries. However, it’s one thing to support the changing role of libraries, but it’s another to become encourage poor research skills. Regarding the “they go online and may end up with…” part, that’s what students learning to become advanced consumers of information should be taught to do properly. If part of the goal is to get patrons back from lazy Google/Yahoo searches, isn’t it the point to encourage proper and sustained research. Sure, librarians are there to help, but statements like this combined with the movement to cater to these students’ ADD makes me wonder how much of a serious priority that really is.
Second:
“This is a new generation, born with a chip,” said Frances Maloy, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and leader of access services at Emory. “A student sends an e-mail at 2 a.m. and wonders by 8 a.m. why the professor hasn’t responded.”
Wouldn’t that just be a case of an impatient and not-so-bright student?