From: Ruth, quantaa.com



College Libraries Set Aside Books in a Digital Age
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
May 14, 2005
HOUSTON, May 13 - Students attending the University of Texas at
Austin will find something missing from the undergraduate library
this fall.

Books.

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.

"In this information-seeking America, I can't think of anyone who
would elect to build a books-only library," said Fred Heath, vice
provost of the University of Texas Libraries in Austin.

Their new version is to include "software suites" - modules with
computers where students can work collaboratively at all hours - an
expanded center for writing instruction, and a center for computer
training, technical assistance and repair.

Such digital learning laboratories, staffed with Internet-expert
librarians, teachers and technicians, have been advancing on
traditional college libraries since appearing at the University of
Southern California in 1994. As more texts become accessible online,
libraries have been moving lesser-used materials to storage. But
experts said it was symbolic for a top educational institution like
Texas to empty a library of books.

The trend is being driven, academicians and librarians say, by the
dwindling need for undergraduate libraries, many of which were built
when leading research libraries were reserved for graduate students
and faculty. But those distinctions have largely crumbled, with
research libraries throwing open their stacks, leaving undergraduate
libraries as increasingly puny adjuncts with duplicate collections
and shelves of light reading.

Mr. Heath said removal of the books had raised some eyebrows among
the faculty and anxiety among the library staff. But he said the
concerns were needless. "Books are the fundamental icon of
intellectual efforts," he said, "the scholarly communication of our
time."

So, Mr. Heath said, speaking of the library, "if you move it,
there's a pang, a sense of loss." He added that the books were
merely being moved within the university's library system, one of
the nation's largest, home to some 8 million volumes and growing by
100,000 a year. Basic reference books like dictionaries and
encyclopedias will remain.

The move, Mr. Heath said, would free about 6,000 square feet in the
four-story Flawn Academic Center, which opened in 1963.

Students at Texas, interviewed as they studied or lounged at the
library tables, said that they would welcome extra computer space
and that they got most of their books anyway at the far larger Perry-
Castañeda Library. But some said they liked the popular selection
at
the undergraduate library and feared the loss of a familiar and
congenial space.

"Well, this is a library - it's supposed to have books in it," said
Jessica Zaharias, a senior in business management. "You can't really
replace books. There's plenty of libraries where they have study
rooms. This is a nice place for students to come to. It's central in
campus."

Library staff members said they were taken by surprise when told
last month of the conversion, which is how the news first emerged.
At a retreat just weeks earlier they had brainstormed about ways to
improve service and save money. They said they had been promised
reassignment after the conversion and feared speaking out publicly
at the risk of jeopardizing their jobs.

Many specialists said Texas was going along with an accelerating
trend.

"The library is not so much a space where books are held as where
ideas are shared," said Geneva Henry, executive director of the
digital library initiative at Rice University in Houston, where
anyone can access and augment course materials in a program called
Connexions. "It's having a conversation rather than homing in on the
book."

"We're teaching students how to do research," Ms. Henry said. "Their
first reaction is to Google. But they need to validate their
information and dig deeper."

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."

Significantly, librarians are big supporters of the trend.

"There's a real transition going on," said Sarah Thomas, past
president of the Association of Research Libraries and the librarian
at the Cornell University Library in Ithaca, N.Y. "This is not to
say you don't have paper or books. Of course, they're sacred. But
more and more we're delivering material to the user as opposed to
the user coming into the library to get it."

Southern California, which celebrated the 10th anniversary of its
electronic center, called Gateway, last October, keeps about 80,000
books at Gateway, although millions more are available at the
university's 15 other libraries, said Lynn O'Leary-Archer, director
of the university libraries.

Similar digital library centers have been built at Emory University
in Atlanta, the University of Georgia, the University of Arizona and
the University of Michigan. The University of Houston, which is
doubling its library space, specializes in the publishing of
scholarly material online.

"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."

Ms. Maloy praised the initiative at the University of Texas as
signifying "that a great university with a fabulous library
collection recognizes it's in the digital age."