nstead of scouring dusty shelves of used bookstores for hours, or waiting for rare-book catalogs to show up in the mail, a University at Albany librarian simply searched the Internet for the out-of-print book. A click of the mouse and a few moments later, a copy of It’s Up To the Women was located from an online bookseller, in original dust jacket and excellent condition. That small online purchase is a large reminder of the challenges facing the University Libraries staff as they operate in the digital age. Librarians must strike a difficult balance of preserving the past even while they embrace the ever-changing technology of the present and plan for the future.

This information tug-of-war raises the question: In a digital world where the World Wide Web rules, will printed material still have a place on the menu at the academic table? Put another way, have rumors of the demise of books been premature, or is it a case of the monograph is dead, long live the e-book?

SUNY develops plan.

“Technology has changed everything we do,” declared Meredith Butler, dean of library faculty and director of the University Libraries. “Before the World Wide Web, the pace was evolutionary. Now, it’s revolutionary.”

Butler should know. She came to the University in 1981 when card catalogs, pencil stubs and scraps of paper — not to mention shuffling through journal stacks in the basement — were the tools of a database search. Today, rows of fast and powerful computer workstations fill large rooms once crammed with bookshelves in the University Library, and literally everything under the digital sun can be accessed in a flash with a few keystrokes. And you don’t even have to come to the library to conduct research.You could browse the databases of the University Libraries from your home computer,in bathrobe and slippers, sipping your morning coffee.

The strength of the University Libraries — there are actually three separate facilities on two campuses — is that they cater to both the technophile and the bibliophile like Martha Rozett, professor of English and a Shakespearean scholar. “I will never stop pulling out books in the stacks,” Rozett said. “Ours is still very much a book discipline, and literary scholars are more likely to publish what they have to say in books and print journals.”

The digital age presents challenges to records preservation.

After a dizzying pace of growth and lightning-quick advances in technology over the past two decades, Butler oversees one of the Top 100 research libraries in the United States. Using 20 measures of strength, including the number of volumes, the University Libraries are ranked No. 92 by The Association of Research Libraries. Just 122 research libraries across the U.S. and Canada meet the association’s stringent standards of membership. In recognition of her accomplishments, the State University of New York’s Board of Trustees recently gave Butler the title of “Distinguished Librarian.” She is the first person to be named to that position.

Butler oversees three libraries, a staff of 146 full-time employees, about 300 students who work part-time and an annual acquisition budget of $5 million — about 75 percent of which goes to buying print resources. In addition to the two million print volumes, the libraries subscribe to more than 16,000 journals and other publications (a vast number of which are available electronically) and provide access to 2.7 million microform items. A sea of information is just a mouse click away. “We’re a fully electronic library now,” Butler said. In terms of technology, Butler is driving a Porsche these days compared to the Ford Escort at her arrival 20 years ago. Pencil stubs and scrap paper have been replaced by super-fast modems and laser printers.

great library contains the diary of the human race,” the Rev. George Dawson wrote long ago. And, like the tide and time, a great library never stands still. That was evident during a visit with Butler at the University Library over the winter break, where 30,000 volumes — returned by students after the end-of-semester term paper-writing frenzy —needed to be re-shelved. At the same time, the finishing touches were being put on rewiring and retrofitting space reclaimed from the former Special Collections and Archives area in the University Library’s basement into a $250,000 state-of-the-art computer training room for teaching students information literacy. Before Butler hands over the keys to the Porsche, she wants students to know how to drive such a powerful vehicle. Or, as Butler puts it: “We want students to be informed consumers of information.”

That means all roads lead to the computer. “Students nowadays want to avoid print wherever possible and do all their research on the web,” said Trudi Jacobson, coordinator of user education programs for the libraries, who oversees information literacy courses taught to about 1,000 students each year. “They’re comfortable with the basics of computers, but we’re trying to help them refine and improve their web searches and give them guidance that will save them a lot of wasted time and frustration.”

Jacobson has watched the progression of the electronic library — where time and geography are irrelevant and the doors never close — in a decade at the University. “I’ll get questions via e-mail nowadays from students doing research in their dorm at 2 a.m.,” Jacobson said. “They want the convenience of a library that’s open 24/7.”

Three extraordinary research resources for the University community.

As the University Libraries commemorate the milestone of two million volumes acquired, the pace of change continues to accelerate sharply. It wasn’t always so. When the University was founded as the State Normal School in 1844, its so-called library was a small pile of books in a corner of a converted railroad depot. There weren’t enough volumes to bother with a card catalog, and the librarian was a student by the name of Darwin Eaton, who was paid a buck a week for tending the modest collection.

Billionaires will tell you their first million was the toughest to make. And so it was with the University Libraries. It took 138 years for the acquisition of the one millionth volume, which came in 1982. But it only took 19 years to acquire another million, reaching the two millionth volume in 2001 — officially tallied at a special event on April 5.

“It’s amazing that a year after we opened our state-of-the-art Science Library, we’re celebrating our two millionth volume, which is a nice moment to think about the past and the future of this institution,” said Gregg Sapp, head of the Science Library. “That’s just part of the balancing act, to look backward and forward at the same time. For me, it’s an exciting and challenging time. We’re just at the beginning of what promises to be a revolution in scientific information.”

learly, the trend is toward a library that is less bricks and mortar and more a cyberspace portal through which information is extracted.

“There is so much remote access of the University Libraries now that it has really changed University culture,” said Laura Cohen, network services librarian, who’s also web master of the University Libraries’ award-winning web site (library.albany.edu). “Until recently, if you wanted to look at one of our databases, you had to physically come into the library on campus. Now, you can do your research from anywhere. That’s a sea change for research libraries like ours.”

“On the weekends, I like to make my tea, sit in my pajamas and search a century’s worth of back issues of historical journals online without ever coming to campus,” said Susan McCormick, a Ph.D. candidate in the history department and associate editor of The New Journal for Multi-Media History, a peer review historical journal published on the web.

Like other busy graduate students — many of whom work, raise families and make long commutes while juggling coursework at the University — McCormick said she finds accessing the library collections remotely via the Internet an invaluable time saver. “But nothing replaces coming to the library in person and going through the stacks,” said McCormick, who was renewing about 50 books from the library in her research area of work, women and public policy. “Print will never be dead in my field.”

till, the electronic search trend is on the rise. In a typical week, library.albany.edu gets 5,700 hits on its library catalogs page, 2,900 hits on indexes and databases, 2,700 hits on Internet tutorials, 900 hits on e-journals and 650 hits on the reference collection. In the month of November last year, there were more than 200,000 library user sessions via the Internet proxy server. About half of those came late at night, after the library itself closed, or after the hours of operation on weekends.

Faculty members discuss how the digital technology revolution is changing the way we aquire information and knowledge.

“The technological revolution is irreversible,” said Cohen, who recalled starting at University Libraries five years ago when they did not purchase a single web-based electronic resource, or any e-journals. Now, there are over 800 full-text e-journals and hundreds of web-based databases. “A big part of my job now is showing users how to get remote access to research resources on the web. And I’m not sure there will even be print journals to purchase five years from now, the way things are changing.”

The Eleanor Roosevelt connection — both It’s Up To the Women and her 1954 collection of women’s magazine columns, It Seems To Me, were acquired for the two-millionth volume celebration — is a nostalgic one for University alumni. The first lady delivered impassioned speeches during visits to the University campus in 1938, 1945 and 1961. Roosevelt’s biographer, the esteemed historian Blanche Wiesen Cook, spoke about the activist first lady at the April two-millionth volume celebration. Incidentally, the book selected as the one millionth volume acquired by the University Libraries in 1982 was The Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“Selecting the Franklin Roosevelt book for the one millionth volume and Eleanor Roosevelt for the two millionth, especially because she visited campus, has great symbolism,” said Geoff Williams, University archivist. “Reaching the two-million mark is just one more sign that we’ve become a major research library where you can find just about anything you’d want without needing to go anywhere else.”

Editor’s Note: Paul Grondahl, M.A.’84, is a feature writer at the Albany Times Union. His books include Mayor Corning and That Place Called Home. He is at work on a biography of Teddy Roosevelt’s early political career in Albany.