Digital Fresh.
“Books smell, musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, it has no texture, no context. It’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be… smelly.”
- Giles (the Librarian), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Episode 1.8, “I Robot, You Jane.”

The University of Texas recently announced that it would be emptying their Undergraduate Library of books, and converting it into a “24-hour electronic information commons.” This is not necessarily a bad thing, if the 90,000 books remain accessible in other libraries on campus. (The University of Texas, being a huge institution, has more than one library building.)

With apologies to Giles, I don’t believe the realignment of the Undergraduate Library at UT is necessarily a bad thing, and it’s certainly not the information apocalypse. If the Undergraduate Library at UT is anything like the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois, it was little more than a hangout and meeting place for the u-grad kiddies. At Illinois, the Undergrad Library had a good fiction collection, basic reference sources, and lots of couches for sleeping. The only times I remember having to go there was to get a book that was checked out of The Stacks or any of the many departmental libraries, or if I wanted to get a novel.

This reassignment of Undergraduate libraries at large universities may actually be very beneficial for both u-grad and grad students (who are the major users of libraries at these places anyway). One concept I’d like to see is to have all the digital resources available in one place. While most of the U of IL’s databases (e.g. Ovid, Silverplatter) were available at any terminal in any library, and remotely on-line, there were smaller, specialized databases on CD-ROM that required a trip to the specific departmental library to use (e.g. English, Women and Gender Resources). It would have saved much physical running around – and more importantly, time – if all the electronic resources for an institution were collected in one area.

Also, there is a certain type of “academic classism” in the division of libraries into Undergraduate and “the Grown-Up Library.” New undergrads without well-developed research or library searching skills may just stop their searching at the Undergraduate collections only. Removing the barrier of the concept of the Undergraduate Library might just force them to explore the other libraries on campus, try other indexes, and expand their knowledge base. Or not.
- posted by Synd-e @ 11:05 AM