Harvard Political Review Takes a Look at “The 21st Century Library”

Ed. Note: If you are not familiar with the Harvard Political Review (HPR), “it is written and published entirely by Harvard undergraduates and is housed at the Institute of Politics.”
“The 21st Century Library” was written by James Bikales, runs 1529 words and includes quotes from a number of leaders in the library world.
From the Article:

“The fundamental role of the library is not to provide books, it is to provide information. So that has not changed,” said Eileen Abels, dean of the Simmons School of Library and Information Science, in an interview with the HPR. “But I think the time has come for librarians to reach into new media.”
The central mission of a library has been and will remain to be to provide “unlimited access to high quality sources of information,” Suzanne Wones, director of library digital strategies and innovations at Harvard Library, told the HPR. Rather than through print books, Wones said, this is now mostly achieved through digital resources and tools.
“More and more resources are digital only — there’s no print counterpart,” Peter Suber, director of Harvard Library’s Office for Scholarly Communication, told the HPR. “When there are print and digital editions, more and more libraries will choose the digital edition, since more and more patrons expressed a preference for that.”

Others Quoted in the Article Include:

• Mark Herring, Dean of Library Services at Winthrop University
• David Leonard, President of Boston Public Library
• Jake Orlowitz, Wikipedia Library Project
• Laura Saunders, Simmons College

Direct to the Full Text Article

Filed under: Interviews, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Profiles, Public Libraries