RE: CHE on bookless library at Merced

["Sloan, Bernie" <bernies@uillinois.edu>]

Forwarding for Karl Bridges, who is having trouble posting to
liblicense...

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Bridges [mailto:kbridges@uvm.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 8:00 AM
To: Sloan, Bernie
Subject: Fwd: RE: CHE on bookless library at Merced 

I get lib-license but for some reason I can't post so I'll reply to you
and feel free to redistribute if you think it worthy.

We hear alot about the "bookless" library and that word is often used (or
some derivation (digital library, electronic library)  Could we not agree
on some common word to describe a facility which combines various formats?
Could I suggest we just call them "libraries"?  Libraries have always had
a variety of formats.

Maybe what we need is some kind of classification system e.g.

Class A -- totally digital
Class B -- digital (over 100 e-resources) with paper collections of less
than 50%
Class C -- limited (less than 100 e-resources with paper collections of
more than 50%
Class D - no electronic resources except a card catalog
Class E -- no electronic resources at all -- totally paper

And of course this could be subdivided by some other criteria like student
population so small schools under 1000 students could be listed as Class
B-2 or something.

Then one has a ready way to compare various facilities which actually
makes some sense.  It's much more accurate and useful to be able to say
that Merced is a Class B library than saying it is "bookless" or
"digital". My issue here really is that we should be accurate in our use
of language.

Karl Bridges
Associate Professor
Information and Instruction Services
Bailey Howe Library
University of Vermont
538 Main St.
Burlington, VT  05405
802-656-8132
karl.bridges@uvm.edu <mailto:karl.bridges@uvm.edu>


----- Forwarded message from "Sloan, Bernie" <bernies@uillinois.edu>
    Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 22:03:01 EST
    From: "Sloan, Bernie" <bernies@uillinois.edu>
Reply-To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
 Subject: RE: CHE on bookless library at Merced
      To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

It's not a "bookless library". From what I read, they plan on having
250,000 items in the library, many of them books.

Another interesting point is that, while the library relies heavily on
virtual resources (mainly from the California Digital Library), the
physical library building looks to be quite large, and they have an
emphasis on "library as physical place".

There's an artist's rendition of the library building at:

http://library.ucmerced.edu/about/index.html

There's a bit about the "library as space" at:

http://library.ucmerced.edu/about/news/libnews/vol1-1/page2.html#space

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 5:56 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: CHE on bookless library at Merced

Of possible interest:  The Chronicle of Higher Education contains several
articles this week on the opening this fall of the new UC-Merced campus,
including this on the library.

[SNIP]