What’s Not at Maastricht University Library | Virtual Reality & Smoothie Bars

The Mercury News NOT Observant

by Emily Deruy 

Librarians at UC Berkeley are holding workshops for students on what to do with the information they collect using drones. At Stanford, they’re experimenting with virtual reality. And across the Bay Area, as more textbooks gather dust and coursework moves online, universities are reimagining their libraries.

“We’re like fish, If we don’t keep swimming, we die.” Karen Schneider, Sonoma State University librarian University libraries used to warehouse knowledge, but they’re places where it’s created now. And that, students and school officials say, makes them more relevant than ever.

Numbers back up that notion. While book circulation is down at each of the libraries the Bay Area News Group surveyed, the number of students using library space is up. Librarians say students are looking for places where they can take the work they do individually online and use it to collaborate as part of a team in the real world. “The digital age has actually raised the importance of spaces for people to actually come together.”

Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, Cal’s librarian and chief digital scholarship officer The exterior of Berkeley’s Moffitt Library is pure 1970, a harsh gray building that from certain angles resembles a parking structure. But the recently renovated top two floors, designed by San Francisco-based Gensler, look like a modern startup office. There are writeable glass walls where students scribble equations and notes, furniture that can be rearranged for individual or group work, study rooms with web conferencing capabilities — and even a nap pod.

For a long time, information was expensive and scarce: “A big part of the problem is dealing with the flood. There’s also the challenge of figuring out which information is useful and reliable — and how to access it.” Jeffrey MacKie-Mason There’s also the challenge of figuring out which information is useful and reliable — and how to access it.

 Students today might be digital natives, but many still come to college not knowing how to search an online database, said Cody Hennesy, Cal’s e-learning and information studies librarian. So he visits classrooms and offers workshops. Samberg, an intellectual property attorney in a past life, helps students and faculty navigate an ever-changing web of open source material, fair use policy, privacy concerns and ethics issues. Continue reading at The Mercury News