Stanford University is about to take its physics, engineering and computer science library virtual.  Calling it a “bookless” library, the learning center will pack away its paper and replace it with digital information.

“Stanford is running out of room, restricted by an agreement with Santa Clara County that limits how much it can grow,” writes Lisa M. Krieger in Mercury News.com. “Increasingly, the university seeks to preserve precious square footage. Adding to its pressures is the steady flow of books. Stanford buys 100,000 volumes a year — or 273 every day.”

Other colleges have similar problems, but Stanford is taking the most aggressive measures to solve them.  Replacing the paper library will be a state of the art study center. “It is only half the size of the current Engineering Library,” writes Krieger, “but saves its space for people, not things. It features soft seating, ‘brainstorm islands,’ a digital bulletin board and group event space. There are few shelves and it will feature a self-checkout system. It is developing a completely electronic reference desk, and there will be four Kindle 2 e-readers on site. Its online journal search tool, called xSearch, can scan 28 online databases, a grant directory and more than 12,000 scientific journals.”

Not everyone is tickled pink. The Physics Librarian, not surprisingly, has mixed feelings.  “When I look back, then there is a certain sadness for me. Any change is hard. And there are moments of joy, when I see bookplates of former faculty who owned and donated the book, and sometimes made notes on the side,” said the librarian, Stella Ota. Imagine her emotions as she triages such Nobel Prize winning physicists as Douglas Osheroff, Robert Laughlin and Steven Chu, current director of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Details in Stanford University prepares for ‘bookless library’

Richard Curtis