The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

If, as Michael Lavin points out, "The primary issue is not coffee shops in libraries, but the wide-ranging implications of electronic resources versus traditional library materials," then how about doing the reverse:

Install computers in strategic places in bars and cafetarias which would attract students to electronic resources, and when they feel like thumbing through the pages of books or printed journals they will wander into the traquil nooks and narrow aisles between stacks in the temples of books we call libraries which will still be hallowed places for those will spend a few secluded minutes or hours rapt in a volume, without a glass or a mug for periodic gulps or sips, or comrades to chatter.

: -- V. V. Raman, professor, RIT (posted 11/12, 5:10 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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