On First Bookless Library Claims and "Embedded Librarians"

The University of Texas at San Antonio’s new Applied Engineering and Technology Library claims to be the first bookless library according to Inside Higher Ed's A Truly Bookless Library. It's entire on-site collection is only available electronically. That's 425,000 e-books and 18,000 electronic journal articles. Do note, however,

Students used to get their engineering and technology books from a collection at the campus’s main library. That collection is still there, and books from it are available upon request. But at the new library dedicated to that specialty, the only dead trees are in the beams and furniture.

UT San Antonio’s new Applied Engineering and Technology Library is staffed with librarians.

ACRL president Lisa Hinchliffe is featured in the article. A snip:

her institution, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and several others have embedded librarians in various department buildings. Their offices in those buildings, it could be argued, constitute bookless libraries inasmuch as they are places where students and professors go to learn about how to use campus collections that can be accessed from anywhere.

Embedded, hum. Remember the whole "embedded news reporters" thing? Journalists who were attached to military units during the 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of the military's information warfare strategy. I guess this is a different sort of information strategy, one that assists the information environment by being where the action is.

While new in the academic context, not that unusual in corporate settings. Back in the 1980s, science librarians began working this way in corporate labs, moved on to patent research, etc. I imagine the time will come soon enough when even larger law firm branch offices have "embedded law librarians" sitting in a bookless firm office setting, providing research support and assistance, while relying on the firm's main office law library to fulfil print requests. Perhaps it is already approaching the commonplace.

Embedded Law Librarians. Hopefully, no firm is or would foolish enough to default to WEXIS research support and assistance because far too much would be lost -- commitment to and continuity for the project until it is completed, client history generally and the context for the specific task at hand, individual attorney research preferences and correcting that when necessary, the hand holding of young associates that goes with the job as every law firm librarian knows, to say nothing about what the billing partner expects, [JH]