Changes in Higher Education and Their Implications to the Library-College

Abstract

The main problem of college library services to undergraduates is the lack of personal services tailored to individual needs, which comes from the isolation of library service from teaching. Accordingly, the library-college of which one of main features is their functional integration can solve the problem.
Although the library-college was often discussed between 1960s and '70s, technical and economic restraints have prevented its realization. However, changes higher education has experienced since the late '70s require more adaptation to student's individual needs. Besides, more sophisticated information technology became available. Under these circumstances, the library-college seems to be more acceptable both to library and to faculty.
Four main features of the library-college are reviewed in Section 2: functional integration of library and classroom, adaptation to student's individual needs, emphasis on independent study, and effective use of various media.
In Section 3, two changes in higher education are discussed: the student-oriented policy and the emphasis on the life-long learning provide a favorable environment to promote the library-college. It is also discussed that the recent development of information technology, including the diffusion of personal computers and the building of education networks seems to be able to overcome the restraints.
In Section 4, some other propositions are made in order to increase the practicability of the library-college.
In the last section, the neccesity of funther research relaed to education networks as a first step to the library-college is emphasized.