SFGate is running A Detailed Story on the New Breed of Academic libraries.
They say librarians are urgently looking for ways to keep students coming through their doors. They also talk about
the cost of online information, which they point out is significantly more than their printed counterparts. An example is the Oxford English Dictionary, which cost about $1,000 for the 20-volume set and had two editions in the 20th century. The online version costs about $10,000 a year — but it is searchable and includes words as they stream into the language.
\”I think everybody on campus is worried about the new generation — that they won\’t get what they think are the most important things in their field. And in the library field, (that) is the habit of acquiring information that has a good chance of being reliable,\” said Thomas Leonard, university librarian at the University of California at Berkeley. \”If we can\’t pass on that habit, then the library fails, even if it looks like a great temple.\”
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