Phil Myrick,† assistant vice president of Project for Public Spaces, observes of libraries that "information is easy to come by these days; good public spaces are not. Increasingly, the stature of libraries will depend on the very fact that they are physical places that are centrally located in almost every neighborhood."

obert B. Barr and John Tagg† argue that "in its briefest form, the paradigm that has [traditionally] governed our colleges is this: A college is an institution that exists to provide instruction. Subtly but profoundly we are shifting to a new paradigm: A college is an institution that exists to produce learning. This shift changes everything. . . . We are beginning to recognize that our dominant paradigm mistakes a means for an end. It takes the means or method–called 'instruction' or 'teaching'–and makes it the college's end or purpose.

To say that the purpose of colleges is to provide instruction is like saying that General Motors' business is to operate assembly lines or that the purpose of medical care is to fill hospital beds. We now see that our mission is not instruction but rather that of producing learning with every student by whatever means work best." Consider this paraphrase: "To say that that the purpose of libraries is to provide information services is to take our means or method and make it our end or purpose. We need to understand that the success of the academic library is best measured not by the frequency and ease of library use but by the learning that results from that use. Our purpose is not to circulate books, but to ensure that the circulation of knowledge produces learning."

Craig Hartman,† an architect with Skidmore Owings & Merrill, observes that "while there is a long tradition to draw on, there is no agreed-on paradigm for the library of the future. Getting to this paradigm is the task before us."

ill Gremmels,† College Librarian, Wartburg College: "I think that libraries have tried to support learning, but I don't think libraries have traditionally said 'We want to make learning happen here."

John Seely Brown† remarks that it is "the learning communities that universities establish and nurture that remove them from the realm of a delivery service, or from being mere traffickers of information, to [become instead] knowledge creators. An on-campus social learning environment offers exposure to multiple communities of scholars and practices, giving students broad access to people from different fields, backgrounds, and expectations, as well as opportunities for intensive study, all of which combine to form a creative tension that spawns new ideas, perspectives, and knowledge."

Steven M. Foote,† an architect with Perry Dean Rogers, declares that "from an architect's perspective, the sleeping giant [among the factors driving academic library design is that] . . . relating to the rapidly growing requirements for collaborative learning space. As we trace the history of how to accommodate readers in libraries, we are struck by the new paradigms that apply. . . . It is apparent that changes are upon us and that the old programmatic models are no longer adequate."

Michael Wooliscroft,† a New Zealand librarian, visited the United States hoping to find innovations in library design that might stimulate thinking about his own library. He states that "we looked for libraries that were really forward thinking and had, as a result of that thinking, produced advanced and exciting buildings. By and large we failed to find them. . . . New thinking at the planning stages rarely resulted in concrete evidence of a new manner of providing services. What we saw was mostly traditional dressed as new."

†Citations