In all the hype over how the Internet would turn people, especially young people, toward electronic information, some experts predicted the demise of the academic library.
But even though some academic libraries have seen declines in usage, library visits are up–in many instances way up–at colleges and universities large and small, said Helen Spalding, president of the Association of College & Research Libraries and associate director of libraries at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
In fact, several schools have recently built new libraries or are expanding existing ones.
“One comment I’ve heard is, `Isn’t it terrible that people are not using the library because everything is online?’ Well, only a fraction of information is online,” Spalding said. “We’re finding our [daily visitor] counts are still going up. One of the reasons, I think, is that a lot of material online makes our collections more visible. People are getting more citations and realizing what they need is in the library.”
This is true even though the University of Missouri and other academic libraries have spent millions of dollars in recent years to provide online scholarly journals, reference materials and other electronic information.
At Northwestern University in Evanston, for instance, University Librarian David Bishop said the library spends more than $2 million a year on online electronic resources. These resources include Blackboard, a software package that allows faculty members to set up course Web pages for e-mail, chat rooms, discussion groups and distribution of course content, such as required readings.
“Students in dorms, faculty in offices … they now can do nearly anything electronically that they can do in the library,” he said. “Interestingly, we’re not seeing a dropoff in library attendance. People say it’s a good place to come for the discipline that comes from not having interruptions while they’re studying.”
Northwestern also recently added a cafe, as did Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, which recently spent $1 million renovating its library.
“When I tell people this, they say it will be like Borders,” Bishop said. “And I say that’s great.”
Other colleges and universities have spent millions more on new facilities. These libraries integrate electronic information technologies and new learning tools and techniques with traditional library collections and services.
One such school is Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington. Last year, it opened The Ames Library, a five-story, 103,000-square-foot structure with pull-up floors for easy access to electrical and computer cables; group study rooms; three project rooms with networked computers, projection screens and other multimedia technology; more than 100 computer work stations; 400 open network connections for laptop computers; and an instruction lab to help students and faculty members learn to make the best use of the electronic resources.
Despite the emphasis on electronic technology, books remain vital. The number of volumes in Illinois Wesleyan’s collection has climbed to about 370,000, from 140,000 in 1989.
Since opening the library a year ago, the daily average number of student and faculty visits has tripled to 1,200, according to librarian Susan Stroyan. Student enrollment is about 2,000.
Illinois Wesleyan President Minor Myers Jr. had the vision, and alumni Charles and Joyce Ames had the wherewithal to bring the building to fruition. The Ameses donated $12 million to the $25.7 million construction project.
“I asked, `Who’s doing the most interesting libraries?’ and found Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott, an ancient architectural firm in Boston,” Myers said. “I said to them, `Build us a library deeply appealing to students and at the forefront of technology–not as it is now, but as it will be.'”
Building upon technology
Shepley Bulfinch also is designing a new library for Marquette University in Milwaukee. The $55 million Raynor Library, scheduled to open in September, will be “almost bookless,” according to Marquette spokesman Ben Tracy.
It is being built at the center of campus, adjacent to the existing library, which will continue to house most of Marquette’s print collection. The two buildings will be linked by a skyway with a cybercafe.
The new library will be filled with computers, a teaching and learning center to help professors use technology in the classroom and a place for students to do research and prepare multimedia presentations.
It will also hold Marquette’s special collections (including J.R.R. Tolkien’s papers related to “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”) and reference materials.
As at Illinois Wesleyan, the library is being funded by private donations.
Nicholas Burckel, Marquette’s dean of libraries, said planning began nearly six years ago after speaking with library consultants about the future of libraries and with faculty and students about how they study and do research.
“We saw a need to provide one-stop shopping at the library,” Burckel said. “Don’t give people content and then send them to IT to download that data or to the video center to do streaming video. We wanted to do that in one location.”
Geoffrey Freeman, a partner at Shepley Bulfinch, said the Internet and changes in teaching techniques have brought about these changes in library design.
“Before, the library was a repository, a place to collect, preserve and release materials as needed. These are still great institutions with great collections, but now we design around patterns of learning and scholarship,” Freeman said.
“We went through a period a number of years ago where people were questioning if there would be libraries. Everything would be digital, they said. We’ve gotten away from that and shown what happens when we integrate information in a service environment and provide connections and analysis to look at it critically,” he said. “We have found that demand tremendously exceeds anything we projected.”
Change brings higher demand
At the University of Southern California, for instance, Shepley Bulfinch designed a library that pulls together reference and computer services. Library demand surged, with more than 1 million student, faculty and researcher visits in the first year, Freeman said.
He said surveys at many universities have shown that students and faculty prefer to do serious work in a library, even when they have online access in their dorm rooms, off-campus apartments or offices.
“The library is a place of ultimate scholarship,” Freeman said. “The place of the library, I think, is more vital than ever. As an architect, I say we are going to revitalize or create a new library, but it is really creating an intellectual place.”
Space for working in groups
Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., strove to create an intellectual place when it built the $67 million Berry Library, which was dedicated in November. It also recently finished the $12 million Rauner Special Collections Library. Both are named in honor of major contributors.
“We are moving into an era in which we’re talking about library as place and as digital space,” said Dartmouth Deputy Librarian John Crane. “While it is important to have a bricks-and-mortar component, there are also other transformations taking place in concert with that.
“Collaborative learning has become more important,” he said. “We need spaces where groups can work together. It’s also true that students, when they are creating their own scholarship, aren’t just putting words on paper. They are exploring different media. So we have much more media production space to pull together things for projects.”
He describes faculty and student response to the new libraries as “wildly enthusiastic.” “We’re still very social animals. People like the energy that’s created as they gather together,” he said.
Best-selling writer Nicholas Basbanes, whose recently published book, “Among the Gently Mad,” is his third to examine book lovers and book culture, says he has no doubt that libraries will remain important to colleges and universities, regardless of technology.
“For all the seismic changes that computer technology has brought to the way information is gathered, stored and disseminated, the finest colleges and universities continue to be judged by the strength of their libraries and the depth of their research collections,” Basbanes wrote in “Patience and Fortitude,” published in 2001.
Basbanes said by phone from his suburban Boston home that he stands by that statement.
“How many books do you have? How much do you spend on new books? Harvard University has the largest library in the world [14 million volumes]. Yale has the second largest. And see how they fight for rankings,” Basbanes said.
Rumors of death exaggerated
“If the library is dying, why are they building new ones all over the world? I’m not a Luddite. I use my computer, I use the Internet, but I have to recognize the value of books.”
Marquette’s Burckel agrees, despite the new university library’s technology emphasis.
“We’re spending more on books than we did five years ago,” he said. “Monographic literature is still largely available in print. About 75 to 80 percent of our spending is on print sources. We require open stacks. Louis Pasteur said chance favors the well-trained mind. If material is there, related to your interest, you’ll pick up something that you would have missed if you had just tunneled in for one thing.”
