Forty-Five Years After Lamont: The University Undergraduate Library in the 1990s

In 1949, Harvard's Lamont Library opened, embodying the idea that undergraduates could best be served from their own library. The undergraduate libraries also protected the collections and freed reference staff of research libraries from the effects of heavy undergraduate use. In the 1970s and 1980s, bibliographic instruction programs developed and expanded. In the 199Os, libraries are under pressure from budget cuts, staff reductions, technological change, and the higher expectations of undergraduates and their parents. Some undergraduate libraries have integrated teaching with new technology or explicitly assumed the role of gateway to the collections of the larger library while maintaining separate physical facilities for undergraduates. Other undergraduate libraries have merged with, or been absorbed into, the library system, disappearing as separate entities. The arrival of the virtual library is encouraging the centralization of capital and the decentralization of intellectual work. Research and debate on the effects of these changes on the education of university undergraduates is needed.