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.
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.
While some people might see this as some awful compromise, it's worth pointing out that, at least in my experience, undergraduate libraries are very different from "traditional" university libraries. I wouldn't have a problem with them doing something similar at my alma mater, but then again, the graduate and undergraduate libraries are pretty close together on campus.
Via Maud, via Ed.
2 comments:
Call me old fashioned, but i always liked browsing the books on the shelf at the library.
Looking for one book and ending up choosing another one i didn't know about that just happened to be on the same shelf.
Leave it to Texas to get rid of books. Hmm. Nuff said.
Ah progress.
But this is an academic library, and only one part of a university library system. I prefer to read books, too, when we're talking about recreational reading. But electronic resources are so much easier when it comes to doing research, finding relevant articles, et cetera, that it's hard for me to blame the undergrads at this university for skewing towards electronic resources.
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