neverwhere: Cushing Academy adopts a new library model.

Cushing Academy adopts a new library model.

No books. No books at all. Not any books. They have no books in the library, at all. They have a book-free library.

In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.

For Pete’s sake: you can have all this stuff, and the books. Seriously.

This saddens me to no end:

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus.

Books are not technology! Books are books! How can you deprive students of the smell of old books, the browsing of the stacks, the ability to hold a collection of paper and words over 100 years old, held and read by countless others before….

At least they can leisurely sip some expensive cappuccino while not reading book in their non-library library. That makes it all okay.

14 September 2009 • via: theconceptlibrarian

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