ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the early work of the Seminar on the Future of the Library at Teachers College Columbia University as it studied the prospects for academic libraries in the emerging digital age. As the seminar members considered the prospects for the library and the needs of the college, they determined that the library would likely play an important and expanding role and the vision of this expanding role, one in which the library would transition from being a warehouse for books into a workshop for traditional and new forms of student and faculty work, would be used to guide the renovation of the library building. The situation changed dramatically when in the middle of the renovation planning the library director retired, a search for a new director failed, and the faculty member chairing the Library Seminar was made the acting director with a charge to lead the library through the renovation and re-imagine the library for the digital age. The remainder of the chapter describes the challenge of preparing the library for the renovation, including a major reduction in library collections, efforts to make the library more welcoming and the closing of the special collections unit.
