"UC Berkeley ranks among the five best universities on the planet in part because an engineering researcher there has no trouble finding the gravity study he needs from the 1970s. An art historian doesn't have to be in Japan to lay his hands on a 128-year-old Kyoto guidebook. And a French scholar can examine a certain 16th century manuscript on European literary academies, no problem. Yet the great university's libraries are in trouble. "We can already see negative impacts on the services we provide, as we stretch our reduced staffing," University Librarian Tom Leonard wrote in an April letter to faculty. He then surveyed them to see if they preferred closing 16 of the 24 campus-supported libraries or just 10, but with fewer librarians. Leonard expected to announce the libraries' fate in July. Instead, the faculty objected to being told they had just two choices for the wondrous athenaeums: horrible or terrible. "There are no first-rate universities in the world without a first-rate library," 110 faculty members declared in a petition asking the university for an extra year to find other ways of keeping Cal libraries not just afloat, but great. "We are in a crisis, and we have to kind of breathe a bit more deeply," said engineering Professor Panos Papadopoulos, who signed the petition. "We need to think more strategically."" - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

:( - Anne Bouey

:( - Tamara J.

:-( - Jessie

Ugh. - Derrick

That is awful. I have to wonder if there's a big money donor that would be willing to donate specifically to the libraries. - Spidra Webster

Wow. - Soup in a TARDIS

:( - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo from iPhone