[LINK] University of Queensland Librarian on Change in Library Design and Role

Antony Barry tony at tony-barry.emu.id.au
Thu Mar 31 01:27:06 AEDT 2011


On 30/03/2011, at 11:31 AM, Tom Worthington wrote:

> Greetings from the 2nd Annual Learning Commons Development and Design 
> Forum, Brisbane. The first speaker was Keith Webster, Librarian, 
> University of Queensland. He started with the good old days where 
> academic libraries were for scholars. The students were only admitted 
> under sufferance and provided they were silent. He used the 1970s UQ 
> biological library as an example of the old style, where the building 
> was there to house the collection (this building's massing reminds me of 
> a mainframe computer): <http://www.library.uq.edu.au/bio/>.

*expletive deleted* My first library job was in the University of Queensland Library in 1964 as a clerk in the cataloguing department doing bibliographic lookups  to provide the cataloguers with a basis for their work. I'd lost interest in ionospheric physics for some reason. The Biological Library was NOT part of the university library then and was run by the academics.

And I would like to add that libraries provide the cultural audit trail of mankind and that university libraries are always bifurcated between the need of high intensity use material for  teaching and the bulk of their collection required for the serendipitous needs of research scholars.

Tony

Phone: 02 6241 7659, Mobile: 04 3365 2400, Skype: antonybbarry
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