COVER STORY
The library that never sleeps: 24/7 access, on campus and around the world
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A library legacy
Kroch Library houses Cornell's massive Asia collection, one of the largest and most significant collections of Asian historical and literary materials in North America. Kroch Library has more than 30 miles of shelving and room for about 1.3 million volumes. See larger image
Faculty and students at Cornell have long benefited from a progressive library system. In 1872, when the university's early library of 15,400 volumes moved to McGraw Hall, it became one of the first academic libraries in the country to serve undergraduates. In 1885, it became the first academic library to install electricity; lighting allowed it to stay open for more than 12 hours a day, longer than any other library in the country.
Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's co-founder and first president, built a great library with a focus on collections that allowed students to gain hands-on experience with primary sources. He preserved items relating to recent history, like abolitionist pamphlets and scrapbooks documenting the Civil War, which traditionally would not have been taught in university classes.
"Both A.D. White and Ezra Cornell knew that you taught through experience. It's not just books; it's not just ancient history," says University Archivist Elaine Engst. "They recognized the importance of documenting great events in your own time. Pamphlets and broadsides, things that were pasted up on walls … that's not typical.
"Their philosophy fits into our current punk and hip-hop collections. Once again, we have fliers that were tacked on walls or handed out on the street."
The idea that recent events are vital for teaching and learning is part of the library's enduring philosophy.
More virtual, more personal
Students flock to the library's study spaces. Cornell's library buildings saw more than 4 million visits during the 2010-11 academic year; outside the library buildings, library.cornell.edu received about 10 million visits. See larger image
Today, a visit to a Cornell library, whether in person or online, provides a level of customization that would have been unthinkable half a century ago, when the massive card catalog ruled and students filled out carbon-copied punch cards to request items.
Digital access in particular has revolutionized research, expanding the role of bricks-and-mortar libraries into sources of constantly updated information. The library not only collects information, from scholarly journals to e-books to specialized databases, it facilitates its digital flow.
"Digital access doesn't threaten library services or spaces, it just gives us new avenues to reach users," says Anne Kenney, Cornell's Carl A. Kroch University Librarian. "In some areas, there may be less need for immediate physical access to books, and libraries are responding by consolidating print collections based on a fine-grained disciplinary approach that's specific to particular audiences and how they do research."
Digital services account for more than 60 percent of the library's $16 million annual expenditures for collections. Five million articles are downloaded from the library's digital subscriptions every year, so seamlessly that some people don't even realize they're accessing the library at all. The "virtual library" – its online presence – saw 10 million visits last year, up by more than 2 million just two years ago.
Constant evaluation
Those numbers might suggest that as digital access increases, people would find fewer reasons to go to a physical library building, but that's not the case at Cornell. The library's campus locations saw about 4.5 million visits during the 2010-11 academic year – close to a million more than five years ago. At nearly 8 million print volumes, the library's physical holdings are bigger than ever.
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