U. of Texas becomes the latest institution to clear out a main library to make room for computers
Colloquy: Read the transcript of a live, online discussion with Frances J. Maloy, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries, about the pros and cons of moving books and journals out of libraries to make more room for computers and technology services.
When students at the University of Texas’ flagship campus return in the fall, they will be greeted by a revamped undergraduate library with clusters of computers, a coffee shop, comfortable chairs, and 24-hour technical help. But one traditional resource will be in short supply: books.
Nearly all of the 90,000 volumes contained in the undergraduate library are being carted off this summer to other libraries on the campus to make room for an “information commons” -- a growing trend at colleges and universities around the country.
The goal is to provide students who are accustomed to downloading information in the comfort of their dormitory rooms with a one-stop center where they can collaborate with classmates on multimedia projects, consult with Internet-savvy librarians, and, in some cases, check out laptop computers or leave them to be repaired. About 1,000 books, most of them reference volumes, will remain in the building.
Critics worry that all of the money and attention being spent on digital libraries leaves less money for books, and that the days when a scholar could spend hours wandering through the stacks, thumbing through musty, dog-eared texts, may be numbered. In their eagerness to embrace the digital age, such critics say, librarians may neglect the collections that scholars have relied on for decades.
At first glance, it will appear that way to a student visiting Texas’ undergraduate library this summer. Half-empty shelves of books are roped off by fluorescent-yellow tape warning: “Caution. Do not enter.” A nearby sign informs students that the collection is being dispersed to other campus libraries and that they will have to ask a reference librarian to retrieve a book for them.
Texas librarians are quick to note that in a few months students will be able to check out the books, at the larger Perry-Castañeda Library and at more than a dozen discipline-specific libraries around campus. And they insist they have no intention of abandoning their commitment to books, even as they move to embrace the digital age.
“All of us are dealing with a creative tension between our commitment to this great print collection and the digital tsunami that’s bearing down on us,” says Fred M. Heath, vice provost for libraries for the University of Texas at Austin. “The challenge is to re-engineer our space to be able to move into this suddenly, formidably huge digital universe.”
Increasingly, college libraries are moving journals into off-site storage facilities and digitizing journals and books. Some are also sharing books with nearby institutions, rather than maintaining separate full collections. In the space that frees up, they are installing more computers and technology services to help students prepare multimedia assignments and navigate through a flood of information available to them today over the World Wide Web.
“Faculty are often requiring PowerPoint presentations and expecting students to develop their own Web sites,” says Frances J. Maloy, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, and a library administrator at Emory University. “We’re trying to keep in step with changing pedagogy in the classroom.”
The idea of giving the library a makeover has caught on at small liberal-arts colleges, including Mount Holyoke, Dickinson, and Hamilton Colleges, as well as at dozens of universities, including the University of Georgia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory, and the Universities of Arizona, Iowa, Southern California, and Washington.
Mixed Reviews
Students at Texas have mixed views on the plans for their undergraduate library.
Allison B. Smith, a junior who is majoring in public relations, seems nonchalant about the truckloads of books that have been pulling away from the library, destined for other campus buildings. She usually visits the undergraduate library just to check e-mail between classes. “I’ve never been here to get a book,” she says.
“The way things are set up these days, it’s kind of a hassle when you have to go into the library to get a book,” she adds. “I can get just about everything I need, right at home, through UTnet,” the university’s high-speed digital network. If she needs a bound book, she says, she can always get it from another campus library.
As research libraries like Texas’ Perry-Castañeda, which was once used mainly by graduate students and faculty members, have opened their stacks to undergraduates over the past decade, students have started looking to the undergraduate library as a place to hang out, but not necessarily to check out books. Changing undergraduate libraries into information commons has saved some from obsolescence.
Ms. Smith is looking forward to having 24-hour access to the latest computers, printers, and technical assistance. “You never know when your computer or printer is going to crash at 3 a.m. and you have a paper due the next morning,” she says.
Kristina Rodemann, a senior at Texas who is majoring in history, would prefer to keep the undergraduate library full of books because, she says, it is friendlier and less intimidating to undergraduates than the larger research library. She watches the transition from a front-row seat behind the undergraduate library’s reference desk, where she works part time.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” she says of the plan to empty out nearly all the volumes. “I don’t see how you can replace books.”
She says she gets tired of the glare when reading material on a computer screen, and enjoys the serendipitous discoveries she makes in the stacks.
“When I do research, I like to go to a section of the library where I might stumble on another book that’s useful,” she says. “It’s different from plugging a keyword into the computer and having a fixed idea of what you’re looking for.”
Mr. Heath, the vice provost for libraries, is well aware of the anxieties researchers and librarians feel when confronted with a rapidly changing information landscape.
“It’s like standing on an ice floe, when you can feel the ice cracking underneath your feet, but you don’t know where the big piece is going to break off,” he says.
While some librarians argue that universities are rushing into technological changes that may reflect a passing fad, Mr. Heath and others believe that libraries have arrived at a pivotal time in their evolution.
“It’s like when the printing press replaced the manuscript,” he says. “I believe we’re at the beginning of a second truly epochal change.”
‘No Stereotypical Librarian’
He is obviously not alone in that thinking. The University of Southern California, which opened what is believed to be the nation’s first mainly digital library, in 1994, has played host to hundreds of visitors from colleges and universities around the world.
The library system’s director, Lynn O’Leary-Archer, says the library has moved thousands of books into a storage center a few blocks from the campus to make room for 250 computers, communal work areas, and rooms where students can work on multimedia projects.
“Campus libraries have become places where people can exchange ideas and study over a cup of coffee,” she says. “There’s no stereotypical librarian in a bun and sensible shoes telling people to be quiet.”
But there are Internet-knowledgeable librarians who can help students sift through both electronic and print material. “Google will bring up a lot of information, but not all of it is useful,” Ms. O’Leary-Archer says. “We want to hone students’ critical analytical skills so they can determine what is valuable and what is junk.”
Over the years, some faculty members, particularly in reading-intensive disciplines, have complained as books have been moved off campus. Most, however, have learned to adapt to a system in which they might have to e-mail the library to have a book delivered within a day, librarians say.
“Change is hard for everyone.” Ms. O’Leary-Archer says. “But when people find that Western civilization hasn’t ended, they usually calm down.”
W. Lee Hisle, vice president for information resources and librarian at Connecticut College, remembers when the idea of storing books to make room for computers was anathema to many in academe.
“A few years ago, people were saying, The sky is falling -- they’re taking books out of the library,” recalls Mr. Hisle, a past president of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Most of the early skeptics have been reassured that books aren’t going to disappear, he says.
“Even our old-timers watch with wry bemusement as society moves in this direction, but no one is marching with placards in front of the library,” he says.
Mount Holyoke’s library has become a more popular hangout since its revamped facility opened in 2003.
“There’s a constant buzz of activity,” says Patricia Albanese, chief information officer and executive director of library information and technology services. “There are times when 90 percent of the seats are full.”
On a typical day in the college’s information commons, three or four groups of students are clustered around tables with laptop computers working on a project, a few are sprawled in soft easy chairs reading books, and others are gathered around a flat, large-screen monitor. A student technology mentor is helping a classmate pull together a multimedia narrative for a history project.
“The library is no longer just a passive repository of information. It’s a more active place,” Ms. Albanese says.
Duane E. Webster, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries, agrees.
“Younger students go to the Web first -- they’re looking for quickness and convenience,” he says. “They want to control the information-search process, and they’re not willing or inclined to be directed in the traditional fashion.”
At the University of Southern California, students searching for books will still find millions of them at the university’s 15 other libraries. And students will continue to read books and visit central university libraries if faculty members insist that they read printed material, in addition to information available on the Internet, says Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association and dean of library services at California State University at Fresno.
He points out that high-tech libraries do not necessarily lead to more active and engaged students.
“Undergraduate students will be as lazy as you let them be,” Mr. Gorman says. “If you accept random stuff plucked from Google as research, the fault is with the teachers. If you can get out of a four-year program at a great university without reading a book, there’s a problem.”
He says universities that are jumping on the information-commons bandwagon are sometimes more interested in style than substance.
“If you put a bunch of computers in a room next to a reference desk and students are sitting there playing solitaire, you haven’t really accomplished anything,” he says.
Meanwhile, each year scholars and librarians are being deluged with a mind-boggling amount of new information, which is stored in various media -- on hard drives and in print. In 2003 alone, enough new information was published to fill five exabytes or, if scanned, 37,000 times the amount stored in the Library of Congress.
That is according to an annual survey conducted by Peter Lyman and Hal R. Varian, professors in the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley. Print accounted for just one-tenth of 1 percent of that, while 92 percent was stored on computers and most of the rest, on film.
Mr. Heath cites those statistics as he contemplates how that explosion of information might affect the libraries he oversees at Texas. He believes it is more important than ever to help scholars find their way.
“It’s easy to get lost in such a big sea of information.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 51, Issue 43, Page A27