The Bookless Vision

From “The Myth of the Bookless Library” (Inside Higher Ed):

Every now and then, someone who doesn’t do research and hasn’t been following issues relating to intellectual property, digital rights management, or academic publishing (let alone scholar's preferences) argues that we need to do something radical to get over our fetish for outdated technology, suggesting that we burn books or ban them. These visionaries assume that everything that matters is digital and free, so why bother keeping paper copies? …

In fact, going bookless is not particularly popular. Books are strongly and positively identified with libraries, and libraries that ditch them get into trouble with the communities they serve, even when they have good reasons for reducing the number of books sitting on shelves. But there's no denying that academic libraries now spend far more of their budgets renting temporary access to knowledge controlled by a few big corporations than they do on buying and cataloging paper things. …

No matter how innovative the bookless library sounds, this isn't a situation we planned. If the academic library of the future is bookless, it won’t be because of vision. It will be because of the lack of it.

Catching Up

I’ve been busy transitioning into a new position, so here is a backlog of posts. The main branch of the New York Public Library was dedicated 100 years ago. An article in The Atlantic, “What Big Media Can Learn From the New York Public Library,” lauds an “old and august” institution that is flourishing in the digital age: 

Everywhere you look within the New York Public Library, it's clear that the institution has realized that its mission has changed. It's no longer only a place where people take out books and scholars dig through archives. The library has become a social network with physical and digital nodes.

An analysis of 120 years of census data on librarians is available over at the OUPblog. From “Librarians in the U.S. from 1880-2009”: 

Starting from a very small beginning, librarians grew into a large profession after in the mid-20th Century.  Like other professions related to the media: books, newspapers, magazines, recorded music and movies, the internet seems to be having an effect on the field, as it has faced a significant decline since 1990.  That decline seems to have slowed substantially since 2000, as librarians adjust to and find new roles in the internet age and the extensive increase in information that it has brought about.

The Chronicle reports on how much of the web is archived, an article in the Times focuses on distant reading, and there is a defense of paper books at the Independent.

Finally, there is an article in Time about bookless libraries. From “Is a Bookless Library Still a Library?”:

From a design perspective, some architects also lament the inevitable trend toward booklessness. Steven Holl, architect of Queens Library's new branch, in New York City, says books still provide character and are a nice counterpoint to technology. "Acknowledging the digital and its speed and putting it in relation to the history and physical presence of the books makes it an exciting space," Holl says. "A book represents knowledge, and striking a balance in a library is a good thing."

On Site but Out of Sight

Inside Higher Ed has an article, “A Hole Lot of Books,” about the new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago. Although the new facility has no bookshelves, the university librarian stresses the importance of having books onsite: 

Reality shows that you cannot do your research well having materials off-site ... The cost of what you would give up in terms of research, studying, and teaching outweighs the cost of the building.

And the university “thoroughly considered” which works would be out of sight: 

They include serial works that have already been digitized, special collections that were not able to be browsed in the first place, and large collections of state documents. Plus, there will still be more than 4 million books in the Regenstein library to be browsed in stacks ... the combination of extensive browsable stacks with high-density, on-site storage as an ideal solution.

In a post at the Wired Underwire blog, “Robots Retrieve Books in University of Chicago’s New, Futuristic Library,” the university librarian says that “research at the university has shown that the more people look to digital resources, the more they consult physical materials as well.”

Here is how the library’s storage and retrieval system works:

A Truly “Bookless” Library

From “A Truly Bookless Library” (Inside Higher Ed):

More interesting than the fact that San Antonio’s newest library has no printed books in it is the fact that more and more libraries are devoting less space to printed books, and are thus reimagining the physical space of the library … Whether the building houses half of its former print collection or none of it, the evolution of the library as a physical hub is something nearly every library is dealing with.

As a shared space for discovery, socializing, and studying, the library is still very much relevant and in demand, says Krisellen Maloney, dean of libraries at San Antonio.

I would argue that discovery (and much more) is enhanced by the presence of physical collections.

Shifting Senses of Place

From “Trading Spaces: Science Libraries Confront Print's Decline” (The Chronicle):

Such changes [i.e., libraries with fewer printed books] are coming first in fields related to science and technology because academics in those disciplines favor journals as the scholarly literature of significance, Mr. Lowry said. And unlike books, most journals are available online and accessed online by their users.

Even as scholars in the humanities and social sciences become more accustomed to doing their work online, Ms. Kenney and her colleagues say the digital world is not yet ready for all types of research. "Our special collections will continue to grow and develop," she said, though online collections are "definitely the future for many disciplines."

For an interesting case of the library as a place of inspiration, see “University Library, or Fortress From a Sci-Fi Dream World?” (The Chronicle). Similarly, the Radcliffe Camera may have been an inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien.

Bookless

Another “bookless” library story: “Stanford Ushers In The Age Of Bookless Libraries.”

More Than a Glorified Study Hall

An Inside Higher Ed article, “Embedded Librarians,” highlights a “distributed” approach to librarianship at Johns Hopkins University:

Two years from now, the [Welch] medical library at Johns Hopkins, a world leader in medical research, will have realized a “distributed” library model — one that nearly everyone else in higher education considers either a far-off goal or a theoretical guidepost. A library located everywhere, and nowhere.

The plan includes: online access to “the library’s website and its vaults of electronic journal articles and e-books”; “'recycling' much of [the library’s] print collection, and storing other books offsite” (“faculty and students will be able to send away for the hard copies via snail mail — like Netflix”); embedding library personnel (“no longer called librarians; they are 'informationists'”) in various departments; and being out of the building by 2012.

Interestingly, the article has a section titled “Limited Implications.” But what is missing here, although it is suggested in the comments, is a deeper appreciation of the library as a place—it’s not just another study space. For some insights into this, see Library as Place: Rethinking Roles, Rethinking Space (CLIR, 2005): “each [essay] underscores the central, growing importance of the library as place—or base—for teaching, learning, and research in the digital age” (vii). (The Welch Library is featured in one of these essays as a base for new services rather than as a place; but supplementation has now become supplantation.)

What the Library Was, Is, and Will Be

In “Bookless Libraries?” Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent debate about the future of academic library buildings

Richard Luce, director of university libraries at Emory, made the important point that the history of academic libraries “has been marked by evolution”:

They were founded as places where materials were collected and stored. Then they shifted their focus toward connecting clients with resources. Then, with the addition of creature comforts such as coffee shops, they became "experience" centered, effectively rendering student unions obsolete.

“Now, in the fourth generation, we’re really seeing the library as a place to connect, collaborate, learn, and really synthesize all four of those roles together,” said Luce. “How do you do that without bricks and mortar?”

Libraries are older than institutions of higher education (and printed books). Many colleges, such as Harvard and Yale, started with a library. Over time, academic libraries have accommodated themselves to meet the needs of their parent institutions and they have evolved along with them. The provost of my institution recently gave a presentation on the pre-modern, modern, and postmodern development and nature of our undergraduate curricula. The institution’s library—its stuff, space, services, standards—is a reflection of that mixture of change and continuity. The library’s collections, locations, and functions will continue to evolve along with the institution’s teaching, learning, and research needs. 

Here is Robert Darnton, recently quoted in “Google v. Gutenberg,” on “bookless” libraries:

It’s naïve to think that all information is online. It’s also naïve to think that all information is in books, either,” he said. “I see this vast world of information in many different forms, and the notion that digital is going to encompass it all is just wrong-headed.

Image: Allen Reading Room, Penrose Library, Whitman College, about 15 minutes ago.