The Globe and Mail Reports on “The University Library of the Future”

Here’s a new article from Canada’s Globe and Mail that focuses on one “library of the future” that’s already open and another university that’s currently working on a plan to redevelop their library.
The library that’s already open (and one we’ve mentioned many times on infoDOCKET) is the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina St. that opened on January 2nd of this year. 
From the Article:

Hunt Library is an extreme example of how the information revolution has caused the role of the library to evolve. Now that we can access unprecedented amounts of knowledge from phones or tablets anywhere, book-centred university libraries are no longer the singular places on campus to retrieve information. Now, they are becoming as much about collaboration as they are about sombre, silent scholarship.

The university currently working on a 20-year library/archive redevelopment plan is Queens University in Kingtson, Ontario.
The article includes quotes from Martha Whitehead, University Librarian at Queens and Paul Cravit, principal of architecture firm CS&P.

“If it had ever been simply about housing books,” argues Whitehead, “the great libraries of the world would have been warehouses, not beautiful icons of learning and research.”
The aim [at Queens] is to create a sense of place that encourages what Cravit calls “intellectual collisions.” Whitehead agrees. She wants the Queen’s libraries to maintain the grandiosity common to great libraries while creating intimate spaces where students can engage with each other and material, be it in book or digital form.

Read the Complete Article, “The university library of the future” (via The Globe and Mail)
See Also: Presentations from 2nd Annual Designing Libraries For the 21st Century Conference
The conference was held at the Hunt Library. 
See Also: Tour the James B. Hunt Library at North Carolina State University (December 26, 2012)

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Libraries, News, Reports