Eoin Purcell's Blog

Stanford Ushers In The Age Of Bookless Libraries : NPR

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Eoin Purcell

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The second article today that reinforces the thinking that the slide towards ebooks is starting to become unstoppable!

The new library is set to open in August with 10,000 engineering books on the shelves — a decrease of more than 85 percent from the old library. Stanford library director Michael Keller says the librarians determined which books to keep on the shelf by looking at how frequently a book was checked out. They found that the vast majority of the collection hadn’t been taken off the shelf in five years.

via Stanford Ushers In The Age Of Bookless Libraries : NPR.
And via Teleread!

4 responses to “Stanford Ushers In The Age Of Bookless Libraries : NPR”

  1. xensen Avatar
    xensen

    So what if a book hasn’t been consulted for five years? Many historically significant texts were only read by a handful of people — if the right person reads a book it can still be influential, even if it wasn’t regularly consulted by herds of undergraduates.

    Reply
    1. Eoin Purcell Avatar
      Eoin Purcell

      I agree with you on that front, I think the point is that if it isn’t regularly consulted it’s better held digitally than in print if only to save space and workload.

      Eoin

      Reply
  2. blog.rightreading.com » Friday roundup | Duly quoted

    […] Stanford ushers in the age of bookless libraries : Studentless universities soon to follow […]

    Reply
  3. xensen Avatar
    xensen

    Okay, fair enough.

    Reply

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Hello,

I’m Eoin,

Co-founder and publisher @fullsetbooks 📚. Expect books and 🍰.

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