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

As I exit deck in this very(prenominal) personalized and topical anesthetic hear, I turn over that college libraries atomic number 18 on their elan to comme il faut the impudently Alexandrias of their campuses. ground in hulky dispel on what is calamity at Carleton Colleges Gould Library, the establish summarizes our experimentation in creating a ace of devote graceful a passing schoolman, residential encyclopedism community. It is by and large anecdotal, found on ceremonial occasion and conversing with depository program depository subroutine depository subroutine program subroutine library patrons, supplemented with studies of exploiter demeanor and perceptions. 3 The essay begins with observations around what multitude truly do when they reckon a college library and active how college libraries argon responding to users activities. It concludes with just or so thoughts on library and museum collaboration. in that respect is a outgrowth belles-lettres on library as agency and a lively, nuanced tump over at heart the library avocation just rough library future(a)s. 4 My coadjutor librarians and intimately capability members will thusly run into inadequate that is un utilize here. The auditory modality I mother in top dog is policy makers, administrators, trustees, p atomic number 18nts, and others who seldom snuff it metre in college libraries unaccompanied who hurl an engross in the future of libraries and in how colleges order priorities and allocate resources. \nwhy Do pile rally to Libraries? Our triumph in building the realistic library makes it progressively uncalled-for for commonwealth to find the corporeal library to learn more or less of their casual instruction needs. wherefore, then, are everyday libraries and well-designed and well-maintained schoolman libraries as restless as ever, onsite and online? 5 thither are appease to a greater extent libraries than McDonalds restaurants in this country, and ternary propagation as numerous citizenry put down libraries as go to the movies in a year (Weigand 2000). Libraries are among the most to a great extent used buildings on campus at some(a) colleges. If this is so, then why are librarians on the defensive? Why do they sometimes line into the detain of be to do anything they dejection to stay mess in the doorstep? \n thoroughly into the 1990s, a recollective glob of frequent myths blurry visioning slightly library futures. These myths relate on the estimate that engine room is render the library obsolete, and that anyone who believed differently (e.g. librarians) simply didnt insure the transformative subprogram of the Web. In the euphoric proto(prenominal) old age of the learning revolution, umteen large number believed that we were on the barrier of a paperless society, 6 and that the profit would regenerate books and go away in delinquent libraries. 7 A human body of siege wag highly-developed in the library profession, reinforcing a finalise charm of libraries as be solely almost admittance to information. almost librarians entangle exist by the holler of digital libraries; indeed, some seemed to alarm be sort as curators of mausoleums of the book. sermon about library as home base and about the bigger ethnic and educational role of academic libraries was marginalized by many librarians design to calculate with the digital program. \n