She believes that the small size of her campus makes it possible to interact easily with science faculty and students without being in the same building. Helena Warburg, whose library is in a state of transition, spoke last. Until recently, the science collections at Williams were split into six departmental libraries which were not staffed and were located within the individual department buildings. She talked about some of the major drawbacks of having a departmental library system, most importantly the facts that faculty tend to remain uneducated about library services and materials get lost. Although the branch library approach may not be as efficient in some ways for the College, on the other hand, patrons receive superior service from expert staff.
Faculty can benefit by being close to their collections as well as to knowledgeable library staff.
Helena also noted that consolidating collections is an improvement for departments with interdisciplinary interests whose faculty and students formerly had to go to more than one department to find journals. The consensus was that there are benefits and drawbacks to each approach. There is no one best approach, and the model chosen ultimately depends on a given institution's resources, campus size, culture, and educational and research priorities. Please fill out this form for possible inclusion in a future issue. Join our mailing list .