November 24, 2008
Tech Therapy: The Library Building
Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast discuss the future of library buildings on the latest
edition of Tech Therapy. The Athenaeum, the new library at Goucher College that will feature not only books but treadmills, is the initial focus of the discussion. Libraries are increasingly all things to all people, and planning needs to reflect on that. “As you are planning library spaces, you need to find ways to bring nuance and agility into the conversation about what the library will become,” Scott says. “You need to stay away from saying the library will be all one thing or the other, or we’re going all electronic or going all paper, or whatever.”
Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Saudi University, Not Yet Complete, Shows Itself Off With an Interactive Map
Next: Researchers Create 'Neighborhood Watch' System to Detect Network Problems
It is ironic in all this discussion that there is no mention of the COST of electronic information. There is such an unwarranted assumption that “if it is electronic it is free” and yet you do not acknowledge the cost of licensing agreements and the restrictions attached to them (and which are such a handicap for independent scholars). It is especially offensive for employees of the Chronicle of Higher Education not to mention this cost when the Chronicle has one of the most expensive licensing agreements for an institutional license in all of the world of scholarly information. An acknowledgment that academic libraries are spending millions, yes millions of dollars annually, on electronic information would be a courtesy. And this is not millions of dollars spent collectively by academic libraries. INDIVIDUAL academic libraries are spending millions of dollars for licensing agreements.
P.S. Please remove the verbal tick from your vocabularies of the word “absolutely” which you use much too frequently and which has no contextual purpose and is not becoming to you at all. It is too much to ask, I think, that you get rid of the “you knows” which also permeate and which are so juvenile and about which you seem oblivious but at least you who are associated with higher education could become aware of them. (Two or three in one sentence does seem a bit much.) Have you noticed that one of the reasons academicians admire Obama so much is his extraordinary ability to articulate and all this without innumerable “you knows” and certainly no “absolutelys”? Come on, Chronicle guys, you can do it too if you try!
— S Nov 25, 11:03 AM #
I enjoy designers who are open to new ideas. However, the clowns who designed the athenaeum are not thinking practically. Ask anyone who has ever used a treadmill or anyone who has tried to work near (especially one floor UNDER) a treadmill about the noise treadmills generate. They make an unbearable amount of noise. Based on my years at Goucher, I will bet the designers do not use treadmills regularly and most likely neither will the majority of students.
Furthermore, will the athletic office have anything to do with this circus? If they do I suspect the treadmills will be off limits to non athlete students during peak workout hours (afternoons 3-6) or the room will be locked during posted open hours.Furthermore, Goucher’s building designers also allocated space in the T/Welsh Hall for a small work out facility and I am still waiting on that one. I am not even going to mention the water fountains in the residence hall or the failure of those managing the college’s capital to allocate funds for housing.
— Goucher Student Dec 1, 04:55 PM #