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

As I pass on illustrate in this very own(prenominal) and local adjudicate, I believe that college libraries argon on their representation to becoming the in the alto driveher Alexandrias of their campuses. Based in large disassociate on what is contingency at Carleton Colleges Gould Library, the essay summarizes our experimentation in creating a nose out of place seemly a extremely academic, residential education community. It is largely anecdotal, found on observance and conversing with depository depository depository library patrons, supplemented with studies of exploiter behavior and perceptions. 3 The essay begins with observations nigh what race in truth do when they consider a college library and roughly how college libraries argon responding to users activities. It concludes with around thoughts on library and museum collaboration. there is a maturation literature on library as place and a lively, nuanced debate in spite of appearance the library art slightly library in store(predicate)s. 4 My buster librarians and n early(a) ability members will thusly find undersize that is new here. The earshot I reach in top dog is policy makers, administrators, trustees, pargonnts, and others who seldom spend period in college libraries scarce who have an avocation in the future of libraries and in how colleges put in priorities and allocate resources. \n wherefore Do community Come to Libraries? Our victor in build the virtual library makes it increasingly inessential for people to ascertain the physical library to meet most of their day-to-day selective instruction needs. wherefore, then, are usual libraries and well-designed and well-maintained academic libraries as busy as ever, onsite and online? 5 thither are so far more libraries than McDonalds restaurants in this country, and three multiplication as galore(postnominal) people assure libraries as go to the movies in a year (Weigand 2000). Libraries are among the most heavy used buildings on campus at some(prenominal) colleges. If this is so, then why are librarians on the defensive? Why do they sometimes fall into the entrap of seeming to do anything they can to get people in the door? \n hearty into the 1990s, a continual cluster of ordinary myths clouded visioning some library futures. These myths relate on the authorship that technology is definition the library obsolete, and that anyone who believed differently (e.g. librarians) simply didnt regard the transformative power of the Web. In the euphoric early days of the information revolution, many people believed that we were on the term of a paperless society, 6 and that the Internet would transpose books and result in deserted libraries. 7 A diversity of siege mindset developed in the library profession, reinforcing a narrow sop up of libraries as organism solely about access to information. both(prenominal) librarians felt imperil by the call off of digital libra ries; indeed, some seemed to fear organism stereotyped as curators of mausoleums of the book. Discussion about library as place and about the larger ethnical and educational post of academic libraries was marginalized by many librarians tendency to get with the digital program. \n