Before being renovated in 2005 the undergraduate library in the Flawn Academic Center at the University of Texas at Austin housed some 90,000 volumes. In a radical jump into the future library all the books but the reference collect was sent to other campus libraries or storage areas freeing approximately 6,000 square feet of space.. Replacing the books are many individual and group study areas equipped with computers, internet connections and other high tech resources. The idea is to create a learning commons modeled after Barnes and Nobel bookstores with their Starbucks coffee shops. The students have access to a large number of electronic resources and the new facility is staffed with Internet savvy librarians and IT support people. Books are still available at the other libraries or can be retrieved from storage. The campus libraries add approximately 200,000 new books per year but with shelf space at a premium 200,000 books must be placed in storage to offset the new ones. Because of this the students are already accustom to waiting for books from storage and not being able to browse the shelves for everything.
The renovation was a daring step forward that follows in the footsteps of other schools such as University of Southern California, Emory University, and University of Michigan who have all built such digital learning centers.
4 comments:
I was actually a student at UT during the time of the renovation from when it was the FAC to when it became the UGL (Hook em'!). It was a quick place to go when you had to look something up online, had a good main cooperative study area, and the main media center (for DVD and CD checkout). There was also laptops available for checkout and many new study areas added after the renovation. The students really needed that type of library, especially on that side of campus- the Main Mall/Westside of campus, the busiest part near The Union and The Drag. It's not really a STEM library but all the same the renovations were great change in the technology era.
I work at UNLV's "main library" (Lied Library( and sometimes we joke about moving all the books off the first floor and making it all computers. Currently we just have reference books on first floor anyways -- the main collection is upstairs. But I can't imagine moving all the books to different buildings and just having a huge computer lab!
My renovation library, Ohio State, got rid of 700,000 books, 1/3 of the collection, and the faculty went crazy. Even though the books would be available at another location, they felt it was unnatural for a library to reduce the number of books. As that library director said, these types of moves are probably going to become more and more commonplace, as the need for space continues to exist.
The renovations at Flawn Academic Center sounds so extreme compared to what is ongoing at Meharry Medical School in Nashville. They added a digital library and archieved many materials. A library in Southlake, Texas is considering changing their format to resemble a Barnes & Nobles book store and expand their delivery policies to satify the needs of their patrons. Libraries must change in order to meet the public needs. (Violette)
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