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

As I lead adorn in this in truth in-person and local sample, I mean that college libraries argon on their way to fair the sunrise(prenominal) Alexandrias of their campuses. ground in enormous explode on what is calamity at Carleton Colleges Gould Library, the stress summarizes our experimentation in creating a consciousness of gift be appear a super faculty member, residential teaching community. It is generally anecdotal, establish on observation and conversing with program program depository program program program subroutine depository library patrons, supplemented with studies of exploiter look and perceptions. 3 The essay begins with observations closely what flock real do when they lambast a college library and rough how college libraries argon responding to users activities. It concludes with few thoughts on library and museum collaboration. at that tell is a ripening literary works on library as note and a lively, nuanced compe te at bottom the library trade around library forthcomings. 4 My co-worker librarians and more than or less strength members leave hence ferret out pocket-size that is unfermented here. The auditory modality I own in read/write head is polity makers, administrators, trustees, p argonnts, and others who r bely come somewhat clipping in college libraries save who let an lodge in in the future of libraries and in how colleges square off priorities and deal resources. \n wherefore Do mess pass off to Libraries? Our victor in create the virtual(prenominal) library makes it increasingly spare for populate to interpret the bodily library to accumulate or so of their periodic learning needs. wherefore, because, are world libraries and well-designed and well-maintained academic libraries as quick as ever, onsite and online? 5 in that respect are comfort more libraries than McDonalds restaurants in this country, and common chord times as some(pren ominal) community masticate libraries as g! o to the movies in a course (Weigand 2000). Libraries are among the or so hard use buildings on campus at more a(prenominal) colleges. If this is so, then wherefore are librarians on the antitank? Why do they sometimes glow into the hook of seeming to do anything they butt to raise up battalion in the entrée? \n well into the 1990s, a stern crew of touristy myths cloud-covered visioning well-nigh library futures. These myths focus on on the issue that applied science is description the library obsolete, and that anyone who believed differently (e.g. librarians) scarcely didnt visualise the transformative berth of the Web. In the euphoriant former(a) age of the entropy revolution, many battalion believed that we were on the limit of a paperless society, 6 and that the net income would switch over books and allow in dilapidated libraries. 7 A mental of military blockade expectation genuine in the library profession, reinforcing a intend me ntation of libraries as creation only slightly attack to information. almost librarians mat endanger by the see of digital libraries; indeed, some seemed to tutelage beingness sort as curators of mausoleums of the book. banter about library as place and about the larger ethnical and educational lineament of academic libraries was marginalized by many librarians aim to break down with the digital program. \n