Weekly Quote

"Only one thing, is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

Mark Twain

Tomorrow's Academic Libraries: Maybe Even Some Books

Imagine a library that is not only bookless but is not necessarily tied to a building, one that takes its personnel and services to patrons rather than expecting them to come to it. Two projects—one now under way at the undergraduate level and one well established at a medical library—suggest where the untethered library is headed. One approach focuses on space; the other on librarians.

Academic libraries have been beset by changes that have led some observers to wonder whether they have a future at all. Their budgets have been hit hard even as the cost of buying and storing information—whether print monographs or journal databases—continues to climb. Search engines have replaced librarians as the go-to source of information for most researchers. And students headed to the library now are more likely to be in search of a cup of coffee than to be looking for a book. If they do want a book, it might have been moved to remote storage because the library has run out of room.

At Johns Hopkins U., embedded librarians like Victoria H. Goode work in classrooms and labs to help health-care students with their research needs.