Without extended opening hours, plenty of space for active and cooperative learning, and even a coffee shop, libraries are doomed to become “student and learning free zones” on campus, warned Richard Detweiler, president of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, a former Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Library and Information Resources and former president of Hartwick College (NY), and Scott Bennett, CIC senior advisor and University Librarian Emeritus of Yale University, in their session on the “Revolution in the Stacks.”
     To prevent libraries from becoming nothing more than storage facilities, the speakers called on college presidents, librarians, and other campus leaders to abandon the status quo and encouraged them, instead, to start thinking and talking about libraries in a new way. “We need fundamental and not just operational change,” Bennett argued, to create libraries that are not just warehouses for printed matter and gateways for information, but function as “places for learning.”
     The concept of libraries and their operating structures developed at a time, Detweiler explained, when written materials, storage space, and readers were scarce. In today’s world of an abundance of paper and digital materials, new storage technologies, and large faculty and student audiences that are technology-savvy, the focus needs to shift from library operations to student and faculty needs. Only with a new perspective on what libraries are about, active learning spaces instead of shelves and hard drives of information, will funds be invested effectively and students encouraged to return from residence and dining halls to engage in their preferred collaborative methods of learning.
     Detweiler and Bennett’s passionate presentation on an issue particularly relevant to CIC institutions given their focus on teaching and learning resonated strongly with the presidents in attendance. Some confirmed that their libraries are too quiet these days, and some vowed to return to campus to start a broad discussion on how libraries should operate and what they needed to offer to be attractive as learning spaces to a modern, technologically savvy generation of students and faculty.