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ANDREW Carnegie stands apart from all other library benefactors. No other man has given so much, or given so widely, in the cause of library progress. Although the United Kingdom was not the main recipient of his bounty, it received from him, personally, about £12 million, and considerable sums, in addition, from the Trust which he founded. It might well be expected, therefore, that his name would always be in our minds and that we would remember him more kindly than any other library benefactor. But it is not so.

The purpose of this study is to explain how library and information science (LIS) with a focus on libraries, librarians and LIS associations, developed into becoming a racist institution that supports white supremacy. The central argument is that a philanthropic organization, the Carnegie Foundation, which led the eugenics movement, captured LIS and with the assistance of the American Library Association (ALA), created a library ecosystem that was structurally racist in order to maintain the power of the elites. This study is an exegetical analysis that is explored through the lens of a Christian spirituality conceptual framework. Some tentative solutions to remedy this problem are suggested.

The Carnegie Mellon University Library Information System (LIS), introduced in March 1986, is one of the most popular services the university libraries have offered. Distributed access to online library catalogs and other computer‐based information resources is no longer a novel approach to library services. However, Carnegie Mellon's LIS is unusual in several respects. The search interface and retrieval system, though based on IBM's STAIRS proprietary retrieval software, were custom designed by the libraries’ staff. In addition, since LIS access is not password‐controlled, anyone with access to both the campus asynchronous and TCP networks can use the system. Moreover, the Carnegie Mellon environment is particularly well suited to innovation and experimentation that goes beyond merely providing access from terminals in faculty offices or public terminal clusters. The Andrew system, an extensive campuswide network of powerful personal workstations under development by the university and IBM, is the basis for much innovation in applications of computing to teaching and research. By linking basic information resources to the Andrew campus network, the university libraries will increase the integration of information resources with routine class assignments and research.

The TULIP (The University Licensing Project) data were integrated into the Carnegie Mellon Library Information System (LIS) in 1994. The bibliographic data were released to campus in April and the image data in June. All electronic library information resourc‐es—bibliographic, ASCII full text, image full text, and selected Telnet sessions—are available through the LIS user interface. This provides the user with “one‐stop shopping,” a longstanding goal of the LIS/Mercury project at Carnegie Mellon.

Historically, libraries have always included special features in their catalogs to meet local needs. This trend has changed over the years as cataloging standards have been developed and accepted. The sheer volume of materials and the rising costs of operations have also curtailed the customizing of local records. However, the desirability of enhancing local records has been readdressed at Carnegie Mellon University. It has undertaken an experimental project to enhance catalog records for new books that meet defined criteria: for example, the books contain “citable” references in the table of contents; chapter titles, while not separately citable, do contain additional useful information; and exhibition catalogs cover 25 or fewer artists. The criteria for and process of enhancing records are discussed, and sample screen displays are illustrated.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel approach to inform heritage conservation based on the effective integration of documentation-based research with advanced survey methods for the creation of a sharable historic building information modelling (HBIM) objects database, specifically oriented to the study of Carnegie libraries whose designs in the USA and the UK were somewhat systematised by early principles of standardisation. The aim is to generate an exemplar developing new methodologies for the salvage, re-use and re-invigoration of shared inherited public buildings which have many common and standardized features.

This project will also involve the collaboration of conservation practice and digital recording together with library history. Digital laser scanning and structure from motion will be used together with archival documents to accurately build an information-rich framework for CAD and building information modelling applications.

By providing the base elements for the semi-automatic generation of a wide variety of morphological typologies and construction elements, this work ultimately promotes a shift towards the implementation of HBIM to support the conservation, maintenance and management of a high number of insufficiently protected public buildings from the turn of the last century.

The intention is that the resulting multidimensional parametric object library will provide suitable support for the faster generation of enriched 3D historic models and ultimately support the preservation of a large proportion of the huge but threatened public library building heritage in the UK and USA.

This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.

Since the mid'1980s, a primary objective of the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Libraries has been to build a state‐of‐the‐art electronic library. This early development was known as the Mercury Project. A new effort is underway at the CMU Libraries to move beyond Mercury to a new virtual library infrastructure. The virtual library will become reality when users can access digitized information as easily as they can access television. A distributed computing environment is already in place at CMU; this distributed architecture allows the CMU Libraries to engage in the improvement of productivity for the campus community by making access to information more efficient. A primary focus has been to be a pioneer in creating and providing services not readily available from vendors.

By formulating a vision that provides for a solid foundation for the virtual library, we can dramatically improve existing library services and create new ones with added value. The new library paradigm will be built on software and hardware information technology. Related requirements include distributed computing and networking; open architectures and standards; authentication, authorization, and encryption; and billing and royalty tracking. The “virtual library tool kit” will include reduced dependence on word indexing and keyword/Boolean retrieval; development and application of natural language processing; and effective tools for navigation of networks. Carnegie Mellon University offers some helpful examples of how information technology and information retrieval may be used to build the virtual library.

IN JANUARY 1899 an advertisement appeared in the national daily newspapers, including the Manchester Guardian, the Leeds Mercury, the Birmingham Post and the Standard: ‘Wanted a competent man as Chief Librarian and Secretary, Salary £100 per annum. Copies of testimonials and particulars as to character, ability and experience to be sent to Hon. Secretary of the Stanley Library, Town Hall, King's Lynn, on or before the 27th inst.’