According to a 1995 CSU Monterey Bay press release:
"'You simply don't have to build a traditional library these days,' says Barry Munitz, CSU Chancellor. The plan calls for saving money by spending on technology that will maximize access to information via computer, rather than paying for expensive books and having to construct the building to house them."
CSUMB got some coverage in Newsweek because of this.
Last December, CSUMB opened a $69 million, 136,000 square foot state-of-the-art library. The building has initial shelving capacity for 152,000 volumes, and a potential shelving capacity for 573,000 volumes.
According to the student government president "It adds a real college feel to the campus. I know the students really appreciate it."
I think we all agree that trying to have a bookless university library in 1995 was really jumping the gun. The resources available online couldn't hold a candle to what's available today. An example: back then I contributed a "sports" section to a kids' book (The Internet Kids’ Yellow Pages). When I did a search for "pole vault" back then I got less than a page of matches, with only one usable match. Today a Google search for "pole vault" gets 1.5 million matches, and I'd be hard pressed to decide which entry to use in that book.
Today, with the resources available online, the economy the way it is, and high profile projects like Google Book Search, I think we're going to see more and more pressure to move even farther towards virtual resources. The idea of a bookless library doesn't seem as far-fetched as it did in 1995.
Bernie Sloan
--- On Tue, 9/8/09, Karen Coyle <lists_at_kcoyle.net> wrote:
> From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_kcoyle.net>
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] The future of libraries, with or without books - CNN article
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 12:44 PM
> > On Fri, 4 Sep 2009 15:49:00
> -0400, Janet Schrader <jschrader_at_CWMARS.ORG>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Similar article in the Boston Globe about a
> private prep school
> >> discarding all books and making the "library"
> totally digital.
> >>
> >> http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/
>
>
> When the California State University at Monterey opened,
> they had decided their library would be all digital. This
> was about 10 years ago or more, so perhaps they jumped the
> gun. The end result, however, was that the students flooded
> the surrounding public libraries, putting a lot of demand on
> them that they were not equipped to meet. The school now has
> a physical library with physical items, and I think that the
> pressure from the public libraries served as proof that the
> students needed physical items.
>
> kc
>
Received on Tue Sep 08 2009 - 15:05:07 EDT