To the Editor:
In a letter in last Monday’s Herald, Dr. Bruno Harris writes of the benefits of physical libraries as opposed to electronic sources, at least with respect to the current status and availability of e-books. I must admit that at first, I idly read through and thought to myself how inconceivable it would be for Brown to significantly relocate or remove portions of the physical library. But then on Thursday, the Daily Pennsylvanian — the newspaper of fellow Ivy school Penn — ran an article notifying the student body that up to two-thirds of its math/physics library and an entire engineering library will close to be repurposed into “active learning space.”
It made me appreciate the wide availability of printed materials available to us at Brown, especially the browsing potential. As a researcher, I find browsing primary material located near resources I know I’ll use to be inspiring and productive. As an instructor, I find having a bank of sometimes similar and sometimes dissimilar ideas and presentations, in the form of books and articles near materials I pull from directly, to be extremely valuable as a teaching resource.
David Lowry-Duda GS
PhD Student, Department of Mathematics
ADVERTISEMENT
