Via Joyce Valenza’s blog: Wow – but this bit of serendipitous synchronicity makes it all make wonderful sense. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/future/changingroles.htm Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries Making Sense of a Messy Future There are three essential actions libraries must take to achieve the necessary transformation and remain vital forces on campus in the years ahead: First, libraries must evolve from institutions perceived primarily as the domain of the book to institutions that users clearly perceive as providing pathways to high-quality information in a variety of media and information sources. Second, the culture of libraries and their staff must proceed beyond […]
Daily Archives: March 22, 2007
3 posts
So glad to see Brian S. Matthews in the current class of M&S. While I am on this kick pondering the role of the academic library, it was nice to catch this in his profile: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6423439.html We can and should lure students in with library spaces designed for patrons, not librarians, Mathews says. On his blog, The Ubiquitous Librarian, he describes a campus study that analyzed spaces nonlibrary users preferred for studying, spaces that combined “refreshments, aesthetics, friends, comfort, cleanliness, diversions, and unpredictability.” Library renovations were accordingly aimed at allowing sociability, playfulness, and a recharging of mental batteries. Mathews is […]
Mills Learning Commons is an active, student-centered learning space that integrates traditional and emerging scholarly resources, information technology, expert help, instruction, and collaborative and individual study space. Congratulations to the folks at Mills Library at McMaster University for winning the McMaster Student Union’s Rudy Heinzl Award of Excellence for their redesigned Learning Commons. Read all about it at the library blog, including this: It is especially gratifying to receive this award since it comes from the students themselves. I visited the library and walked through the commons when I was on campus in January and it was ALIVE with students […]