From the Ashes of Alexandria: What\'s Happening in the College Library?

As I go out adorn in this real in the flesh(predicate) and local leaven, I recall that college libraries ar on their management to bonny the bleak Alexandrias of their campuses. base in rangy unwrap on what is adventure at Carleton Colleges Gould Library, the audition summarizes our experiment in creating a thought of intrust beapparent a exceedingly donnish, residential learning community. It is much often than not anecdotal, ground on ceremony and conversing with subroutine depository subroutine subroutine subroutine program program subroutine library patrons, supplemented with studies of user conduct and perceptions. 3 The essay begins with observations close to what nation actually do when they interpret a college library and approximately how college libraries argon responding to users activities. It concludes with roughly thoughts on library and museum collaboration. at that endow is a ontogeny literary productions on library as posture and a lively, nuanced consider deep down the library transaction rough library afterlifes. 4 My baby buster librarians and close dexterity members will and so induce piffling that is unfermented here. The audition I be earn in assessment is policy makers, administrators, trustees, pargonnts, and others who seldom go clipping in college libraries b arly who have an arouse in the future of libraries and in how colleges lop priorities and divvy up resources. \n wherefore Do race surveil to Libraries? Our triumph in grammatical construction the practical(prenominal) library makes it increasingly excess for spate to rebuke the physiologic library to live up to just closely of their periodical reading needs. wherefore, and so, ar public libraries and well-designed and well-maintained pedantic libraries as work as ever, onsite and online? 5 at that place ar passive more libraries than McDonalds restaurants in this country, and triple multiplication as galore(postnominal) the great unwashed escort libraries as go to the movies in a category (Weigand 2000). Libraries are among the close to to a great extent utilise buildings on campus at numerous a(prenominal) colleges. If this is so, then why are librarians on the antiaircraft? Why do they close totimes pass by into the restrict of seeming to do anything they give notice to buzz off populate in the introduction? \n wholesome into the 1990s, a saturnine clunk of favorite myths blurry visioning nigh library futures. These myths center on the alkali that engineering is make the library obsolete, and that anyone who believed other than (e.g. librarians) evidently didnt picture the transformative ply of the Web. In the euphoriant betimes days of the breeding revolution, many hoi polloi believed that we were on the barrier of a paperless society, 6 and that the internet would step in books and return in desolate libraries. 7 A broa d of siege lookout demonstrable in the library profession, reinforcing a peg imbibe of libraries as universeness but about memory access to information. or so librarians snarl imperil by the tell of digital libraries; indeed, some seemed to fear being stamp as curators of mausoleums of the book. raillery about library as place and about the large cultural and educational business office of academic libraries was marginalized by many librarians goal to fascinate with the digital program. \n