While I believe there will always be a place for the book in the hearts of academics, it is far less likely there will be a place for the book, or at least for every book, on the academic campus. [...]
This is not to say that academic library construction and renovation have come to an end. But rather than being conceived of as on-campus book warehouses, academic libraries are today being reimagined as spaces in which learning, collaboration and intellectual engagement take center stage.
— qz.com
More from the world of library design:
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Meanwhile Wisconsin is moving public funding from university to Sports stadiums--which are increasingly empty bc few can afford. Who are the architects of our Idiocracy?
We should note that the article at Quartz.com is authored by a university librarian from California, and that his comments are specifically directed toward proposed policies for college libraries. Archinect's illustration of the New York Public Library's main research branch here is not helpful at all.
The New York Public Library's main branch is one of the world's premier research libraries, and right now, due to bungling on part of its board and president(s) (that is presidents Paul LeClerc and Anthony Marx), seven stories of stacks below the Rose Reading Room (main) are vacated of books. NYPL does not serve as an example of "no more room for books" when space capable of holding well over a million books isn't being used due to mismanagement and trustee arrogance. For the moment, the books that should be on-site are being warehoused in Princeton, NJ. They are hauled to New York in trucks on the Turnpike, days, instead of minutes late, to the scholars from all over the nation and world who need them. What if Archinect had used the Library of Congress building as illustration for this note instead? Would this have been any more logical or relevant? See as reference the late Ada Louise Huxtable's extraordinary critique of what had been the Central Library Plan for the NYPL research branch, which includes her defense of the physical book as well.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323751104578151653883688578
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