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

[Steven Clark]

The tensions between these two audiences fragments discussions regarding the *way* university libraries meet their needs. This is reflected in the funding priorities, and the funding levels, for these institutions.

There is also perhaps a third audience - the wider community - who are usually welcome to use library collections, but rarely actively engaged to do so. (The general public do access university libraries.) 

There are lots of claims that libraries need to be made more relevant to 'todays users', however, it is also perhaps true that people need better (proper?) education in what libraries are *for* and  how to use them.

Disappointing as this may be for many students, Google does not provide all the answers to every question. And neither does WolframAlpha. And libraries are not we rely about answers.

Indeed, answers may not be the most important role for libraries: instead, the questions that their collections enable one to ask are probably at least as important.

from Steven via Bandersnatch, a frumious iPad

On 31/03/2011, at 12:57 AM, Antony Barry <tony at tony-barry.emu.id.au> wrote:

> 
> 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
> Email: tony at Tony-Barry.emu.id.au, antonybbarry at me.com, antonybbarry at gmail.com
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