Friday 12 November 2010

Cambridge Network lunch discussion - is the physical library redundant?

Well I didn't think I would be blogging again after the cam23things programme ended but now realised it is one of the easiest ways to get a whole list of links up where anyone can access them. 

Once a month at Cambridge University some of us get together at lunchtime to discuss a current journal article or blog post of relevance to the library and information profession. But for the event on 1 December, I decided to put forward a discussion of the Times Higher Education debate on "is the physical library redundant in the 21st Century?".  This involved more than just a reference to one article so I am putting up the links for discussion here for easier access.  If anyone spots anymore then please feel free to add them in the comments.

The debate involved Mary Beard (Professor of Classics at Cambridge), Clive Bloom (Emeritus Professor of English at Middlesex), Sarah Porter (Head of Innovation at Jisc)and Martin Lewis (director of library services at Sheffield university).

If you are attending the lunch please look at and read some of the following:

The podcast of the debate which is about 90 minutes and background to the debate.

There have been a number of blog posts following the event by the debaters and audience members:

Mary Beard's blog entry "Bedding down in the library" on her Don's life blog.

Sarah Porter has blogged about it and James,  and Tom Roper.   Also an article on the BBC about a "bookless" i.e. digital only library. 

That should hopefully be enough to get the discussion going.

3 comments:

  1. Great topic Lyn, looking forward to discussing it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is really handy to link to! Thanks: we use it on our page: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/librarians/ 'what's on? box...

    Have you thought of a Goggle calendar for brown bag stuff?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    This is just to thank Lyn for that event, and the background reading, which was informative and stimulating in displaying the variety of viewpoints professional have.

    ReplyDelete