Continued Viability: A Review of the Life Sciences Library at Indiana University in a Time of Institutional Change and Proposed Branch Library Downsizing

What's So Special About Special Libraries?

“…With the advent of increased availability of and demand for online access to resources, academic libraries are shifting emphasis away from decentralized branch libraries and toward more general services and physical spaces such as information commons and collaborative work spaces (Winterman & Hill, 2010). Independent special libraries, though perhaps more in control of their own destiny, must ensure continued funding.…”

Science Library Trends at ARL Institutions

“…Since then, many science librarians have written of their own experiences in downsizing, closing, and rethinking library services. However, the literature has focused on one subject (Garritano 2007) or one university (Winterman and Hill 2010;Twiss-Brooks 2005;Lewin 2011;Sandy et al 2014) and is missing the data needed for librarians, managers, and administrators to understand the overall trends of science libraries today. Therefore, our goal in this paper is to expand and update the data available beyond individual universities to all Association of Research Libraries (ARL) science libraries.…”

The Measureable Effects of Closing a Branch Library: Circulation, Instruction, and Service Perception

“…B. Hill as well as by Barton Lessin, the increase of electronic resources diminished the need for a physical library or at least a print collection. 4 This point is often debated with the rise of literature supporting the importance of the "library as a place." For example, Karen Antell and Debra Engel discovered, contrary to their expectations, that younger scholars more than older scholars felt that the library was a valuable place for scholarship and contemplation.…”