The Digital Future of Libraries

I found an interesting annotation for a CLIR report on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s blog UI Current LIS CLIPS (September 2006 Issue compiled and annotated by Sue Searing and Karla Stover Lucht) regarding the how digitization in libraries is rapidly changing the library’s role from custodian of physical books to managers of information:

Library as Place: Rethinking Roles, Rethinking Space.
Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, February 2005. 89pp.
Purchase Article at http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub129abst.html (HTML or PDF full text)

 Bernard Frischer, a scholar of classics, claims that “the research library will survive because of the introduction of ever more and newer digital technologies, not in spite of them.” As print-on-demand becomes the norm, physical libraries will gain greater value as repositories for rare books, manuscripts, and books that have not been digitized. Volume counts will not be the measure of great libraries, but rather the quality of their information management and presentation. Some digital formats are not designed for dissemination over the Internet – for example, immersive 3-D computer models, for which libraries should build theaters. Libraries should design work environments for optimal use of multiple e-resources at a time, to satisfy the humanist’s need to consult many editions of a text, and to foster collaborative scholarship. Inspirational library spaces should emphasize the “the centripetal, community-building power of real physical presence over the alienating, community-rending effects of mere virtual presence.”

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