Without a doubt, this isn’t your grandmother’s library
Dean and Director of Central University Libraries Gillian McCombs keeps a wooden card catalog in her office suite. But it is not a reference tool. She keeps it for history and as a reminder of how much academic libraries have changed in the past 10 years.
McCombs and three other North Texas library leaders discussed library changes at a recent Friends of the SMU Libraries program, “This Isn’t Your randmother’s Library.”
Pattie Orr, dean of libraries and vice president of information technology at Baylor University; Gerald Saxon, dean of libraries at University of Texas, Arlington; and Sandy Miller, director of the Business Information Center at SMU, discussed the challenges and rewards of leading changing libraries.
24-hour resource
Panelists agreed that today’s academic libraries never sleep. Students gather there 24 hours a day to study and collaborate on projects.
Library electronic resources are always available to scholars around the world. Gone are wooden card catalogs and long study tables, replaced by online search engines and computer stations. Students and faculty access academic libraries online hundreds of times every day, but they may rarely enter library buildings, panelists agreed. Professors who once spent part of every week in library periodicals sections, scanning the latest academic journals, now read and search the libraries’ online subscriptions from their office computers. From their laptops in residence halls,students search databases available only through the libraries’ online resources.
Changing spaces
“Our libraries at UTA are no longer book repositories,” Saxon says. UTA stores many of its rarely used books offsite and pulls and delivers books to patrons by request. Increasingly librarians are leaving their desks and roaming the library, taking their skills to patrons, he says. Reference librarians at UTA are available around the clock in person and by instant message. Library space is prime real estate for study zones, says Pattie Orr. Students choose among areas designated for monastery quiet, hushed voices or collaborative spaces for the group projects that are increasingly assigned by faculty members. When students look for places to practice group and individual presentations, they turn to libraries, Miller says. The Business Information Center at SMU contains a presentation practice area with the same podium technology as in classrooms in the Cox School of Business. The Center, which also includes a studio for podcast creation, houses few books, Miller says. “Technology brings people to our library.”
All about access
Technology may soon create a global library with digital resources from all over the world, Orr says. “Partnerships are critically important in libraries today. It’s all about access, not ownership.” Libraries are increasingly making special collections of rare resources available digitally, such as Baylor’s gospel music collection, she says.
What lasts
In the future, computer terminals may be replaced by the next wave of technology. A flat-screen monitor may take its place in history, next to the wooden card catalog in Gillian McCombs’ office. But the things patrons love the most about libraries will not change, she says. “Libraries will always be a place to reflect and open up the landscapes of the mind.
