This exciting but immature information environment cannot bear the burden of achieving our culture's heritage, nor can it support serious research in most fields. As appealing as leaping into the future may sound, there is nothing there to land upon yet. The fact that we have devoted so much in the way of resources to this future, and focused so much of our attention on it, has left much of the traditional library system scuttling about begging for help while being viewed as misguided and anti-progress. Defending the collection of journals and books, the provision of small, departmental libraries, or reading rooms with topical collections can all be made to sound Victorian in the withering onslaught of the computer brigade. But those are the tools that are still used by most faculty and students on the campus, even those who love their laptops.
Libraries are still places, places with objects.
It will be a while before this existing culture of information is bred out of us. But despite this basic truth, libraries as a center for funding have become unattractive. But before simply taking that lament at face value, look at the investments in computer hardware and infrastructure on campus, chart its growth against that of funding for the collection, and you will get a clearer picture. A second important point about the depth of the library problem is that the campus has systematically deprofessionalized library services, and librarians are disappearing from the places where traditionally they have served the library patrons. There are 33 percent fewer librarians at Berkeley than there were when I arrived in 1981.