The 46-year-old says 'I’m not sure we’ll even have a one' when he’s 60. “ 'Fifteen years from now you won’t need a library,' he says, his office cluttered with a 52-inch flat screen monitor, a collection of beer cans and a bike. But then came along people such as Michael Eisen, a sparky professor of molecular and cell biology. "For as long as anyone can remember, such a declaration had gone unchallenged. Consider a statement in the opening pages of the Report of the Commission on the Future of the UC Berkeley Library from last October: “There is simply no great University without a great library.” (The University of California library system now has some 36 million volumes, exceeding the number in the Library of Congress.) This substantial investment is not just financial-it is understandably emotional. Today UC Berkeley’s libraries alone have more than than 11 million. "The University of California library started in 1868 with 1,000 volumes. On the other side are the passionately aggrieved fighters for preserving the ancient legacy of books, which they assert have lost none of their power and purpose-and likely never will." They unabashedly acknowledge that means retreating from the shelves of books that have been libraries for millennia. On one side of the battle line are the steely advocates for embracing what they firmly believe is the future of Internet-based information centers. "The turmoil is over the biggest change in information systems since the invention of movable type some 500 years ago. On JanuCalifornia Magazine published by the University of California published an article entitled " Schism in the Stacks: Is the University Library As We Know It Destined for Extinction?" Excerpts appear below:
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