Relevant Web Pages for Planning Libraries of the Future--Libraries of the Distant Past!

        In our previous discussions of libraries, and of librarians as custodians of our textual future, we talked about the difficult choices bricks-and-mortar librarians face when the accumulation of printed material threatens to overwhelm the building's shelf space.  What happens when digital information pours into the same architecture, competing with the print collection for funds to maintain it and space to use it.  Before class today, and in the first ten minutes, take a while to talk about the big picture: what are the main elements that must be taken into account when designing all library structures?  Then, project your thinking fifty, one hundred, or a thousand years into the future.  The world's oldest libraries (the monastery at St. Gall, for instance) are over one thousand years old.  Plan of St. Gall.