The Library Building Committee has worked intensively for the past four months, translating the guiding concepts of the Report of the Task Force on the Library of the 21st Century into a specific plan for the combined new Berry Library and renovated Baker Library. Although our plans are not yet final, we are confident that we are creating a coherent program that merges new information technologies with more traditional formats in a way that maintains the position of the Dartmouth College Library in the front ranks of academic research libraries, both now and in the future.
The Berry/Baker Library will offer Dartmouth faculty, students and staff convenient access to the information they need, in whatever format they desire, in a timely manner. The centerpiece of the new library will be an information services hub from which users will move to areas containing more specialized information resources and services, including, among others, print and electronic reference sources, monographs and journals, government documents, computerized resources, maps, and video and sound recordings.
In the planning process we have consulted extensively with experts about the future of libraries and information technology. While it is clear that many forms of information and scholarly communication are moving rapidly into electronic formats, none of us can predict the precise timing and extent of this shift in the various academic disciplines. We do know that the next several decades will be ones of extensive change for libraries, an era in which paper and electronic information sources will coexist and evolve together in challenging and unpredictable ways. Dartmouth's new library, therefore, must incorporate great flexibility in its program design. The new spaces that we create will be able to accommodate dramatically changing uses. If shifts from paper to electronic resources occur faster than our best estimates have led us to predict, then areas that otherwise would be stack space can be reconfigured as additional electronic facilities and study spaces. If such shifts occur more slowly than we expect, we will have contingencies for providing additional space for books.
The library we envision will not be large enough for everything that we would like to include within it. Requested new library space exceeded available new space by a factor of two, forcing the building committee to make some difficult choices. The committee's priority has been to include in the library those program elements that it considered essential to achieve the goals established by the Task Force on the Library of the 21st Century. Proposals that were evaluated but which, in the end, could not be fit into the library program included: an emeritus faculty center, a film library with the requisite projection facilities, and a language resource center.
The fundamental question of whether to locate Computing Services within the new library was considered very carefully, given its close - and growing - relationship with the Library. Computing Services consists of several units, including Academic Computing, Administrative Computing, a Business Office, the Computer Store, Instructional Services, the Repair Shop, Technical Services, and User Communications. We anticipate that only the functions of academic computing will be included within the new library, although it is clear that Dartmouth's facilities planning efforts must continue to keep in mind the close relationship between all of Computing and the Library.
Our work has been informed by the extensive inquiry of the Task Force on the Library of the 21st Century as well as our own examination into the scholarly research and teaching needs of Dartmouth faculty and students. We have consulted and read widely about trends in library services and information technology. We also have benefited enormously from the knowledge and experience of Geoffrey Freeman of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott, the preeminent library architect in the United States, about libraries that peer institutions are building, many of which we have visited.
Early this summer the Library Building Committee's final recommendations for a detailed library program will be forwarded to the Provost for approval.
The Library Building Committee will hold a public information session on Friday, May 24 at 3:30 p.m. in 3 Rockefeller. All members of the Dartmouth community are invited to attend and to share their thoughts and reactions to the library program as it is developing.
- John G. Crane,
Chair Library Building Committee