Rethinking the Academic Library

Link to November 6 Inside Higher Ed post, "Bookless Libraries?" (via Lazyfeed)

Excerpt: When does a library cease to be a library?

What started as a debate over whether brick-and-mortar libraries would survive much further into the 21st century turned into an existential discussion on the definition of libraries, as a gathering of technologists here at the 2009 Educause Conference pondered the evolution of one of higher education’s oldest institutions.

“Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” said Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University. “Kaput. Finito. And we need to move on to a new concept of what the academic library is.”

Link to November 6 The Digital Professor blogpost comment to the above article, "Are libraries dead? No, they're changing".

Excerpt: It’s not so much that libraries as a place is dead, but their purpose is changing. Do we really need to house print copies of so many books and journals anymore? Probably not. Libraries should convert their spaces into meeting places for research and study. As Inside Higher Education article points out, academics from a number of disciplines are not only going online for the library needs, but are creating new “online environments [that] are, in effect, libraries themselves;