<p>hayden, we r essentially in agreement. Size has value. But it is not the sole determinant. Obviously the thousands of students surveyed found other factors to be of significant importance. I for one would place great weight on the quality and availability of librarians for assistance when doing research. There are so many factors!</p>
<p>By the way Veritas, tell me, the BYU students who rave about their libraries, have they visited the libraries of dozens of other top universities? If not, why is their opinion...or the opinion of any undergraduate or high school student even taken? Without a common frame of reference, they would be taking shots in the dark!</p>
<p>The contents of the survey package is a question for PR. Perhaps you should shoot them an email? That could have easily been a question. But I suspect they were asked to rate different aspects of library operations on some sort of scale.</p>
<p>The 1998 Princeton Review Gourman Report gave the following ranking of libraries. I am aware that the Gourman methods are a mystery but they yield a score on a 5-point scale. </p>
<p>harvard 4.94
yale 4.91
illinois UC 4.89
columbia 4.85
cornell 4.83
michigan AA 4.81
berkeley 4.77
wisconsin Mad 4.74
stanford 4.73
ucla 4.70
u chicago 4.67
minnesota 4.64
indiana bloom 4.62
ohio state col 4.60
texas austin 4.58
princeton 4.57
northwestern 4.52
u penn 4.51
notre dame 4.50
duke 4.45
nyu 4.42
johns hopkins 4.38
u virginia 4.37
u washington 4.36
louisiana state BR 4.35
north carolina CH 4.32
michigan state 4.30
syracuse 4.26
rutgers NB 4.23
u iowa 4.22
brown 4.18
us air force acad 4.15
u pittsburgh 4.12</p>
<p>A seven year old review with no criteria? (although it does look like another SIZE study). Don't cite this in your next college term paper. LOL</p>
<p>for the size of the school
Reed has an excellent library
<a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/PacificNorthwest/Announcements/Announce-405.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.gatesfoundation.org/PacificNorthwest/Announcements/Announce-405.htm</a></p>
<p>links to other college libraries
<a href="http://www.adjunctnation.com/tools/refroom/76/%5B/url%5D">http://www.adjunctnation.com/tools/refroom/76/</a></p>
<p>Real library rankings</p>
<p>here are the top 40 according to the American Research Library ranking supplied by barrons:
1 HARVARD 1.0000
2 YALE 2.0000
3 CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 3.0000
4 TORONTO 4.0000
5 MICHIGAN 5.0000
6 ILLINOIS, URBANA 6.0000
7 CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 7.0000
8 CORNELL 8.0000
9 COLUMBIA 9.0000
10 TEXAS 10.0000
11 WISCONSIN 11.0000
12 INDIANA 12.0000
13 PENNSYLVANIA STATE 13.0000
14 WASHINGTON 14.0000
15 NORTH CAROLINA 15.0000
16 PRINCETON 16.0000
17 NEW YORK 17.0000
18 CHICAGO 18.0000
19 MINNESOTA 19.0000
20 DUKE 20.0000
21 PENNSYLVANIA 21.0000
22 ALBERTA 22.0000
23 OHIO STATE 23.0000
24 BRITISH COLUMBIA 24.0000
25 VIRGINIA 25.0000
26 IOWA 26.0000
27 ARIZONA 27.0000
28 PITTSBURGH 28.0000
29 RUTGERS 29.0000
30 NORTHWESTERN 30.0000
31 GEORGIA 31.0000
32 NORTH CAROLINA STATE 32.0000
33 UTAH 33.0000
34 TEXAS A&M 34.0000
35 WASHINGTON U.-ST. LOUIS 35.0000
36 FLORIDA 36.0000
37 ARIZONA STATE 37.0000
38 JOHNS HOPKINS 38.0000
39 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 39.0000
40 MICHIGAN STATE 40.0000</p>
<p>Indiana 12, Notre Dame ????</p>
<p>this is the most useless set of rankings I have ever seen</p>
<p>I tend to agree Shizz. The quality of a library system is not very relevant. But it is what the OP was asking for, so what the hoo!</p>
<p>Barrons, what is your problem with Notre Dame? On multiple threads, you constantly bash ND for no apparent reason.</p>
<p>back to libraries, the ivies have a program called BorrowDirect. This program allows students to have access to every book at all the ivies (excluding Harvard). So Ivy students at every school (other than Harvard) have access to over 40 million volumes.</p>
<p>I think interlibrary loans are awfully common. At my daughters college Reed, someone out of state has even checked out one of her friends senior theses.
It is not so important anymore to have all materials on site. Many publications are online subscription, the search engines make finding your topic material much easier than in the old days.</p>
<p>Yeah, but how many of those 40 million volumes are the same? Probably quite a bit. And the actual library doesn't matter a whole lot these days when you can get much more information through the online subscriptions, and I'm sure pretty much every college library has quite a bit of those.</p>
<p>OK, I'll throw fat in the fire. No one here has yet mentioned the Assocation of College and Research Librarians, the professional association that sets the standards for academic libraries.</p>
<p>Each year, the ACRL issues an "Excellence in Academic Libraries Award" to a university, undergraduate college, and community college that has done an exemplary job of developing a library that supports the educational goals of the school. Note, the award isn't based on the SIZE of the library or the niceness of the building. To be chosen for the award, the libraries have to have programs that assist their academic communities in actually USING the library. Accessibility is one part, so are programs that assist student research and LEARNING. In other words, the awards look at libraries as more than just big buildings full of books: they look at how useful they are to the students who use them and what they contribute to the educational mission of the school. There is a comprehensive application and review process in order to win the award.</p>
<p>The bottomline is, you can have billions of books and still not do a very good job of supporting the education of a school's students. </p>
<p>Here are libraries that have won the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Awards for the past 7 years:</p>
<p>University Libraries:</p>
<p>University of Virginia
University of Washington
Loyola University of New Orleans
Cornell
University of Arizona
North Carolina State University Library system</p>
<p>Undergraduate colleges:</p>
<p>Mt. Holyoke
Hope College
Baruch College
Oberlin
Earlham
Wellesley</p>
<p>I won't bother listing the community college awards because I am sure that many here would NEVER believe that a community college could have a decent library.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is you'll never need access to such a vast collection as an undergrad. Unless you're doing groundbreaking research in land migration patterns of dodo birds in sub-Saharan Africa circa late 18th centry, having every volume of everything ever published is useless.</p>
<p>And what I just said is irrelevant because nearly every journal publication and their archives are stored online.</p>
<p>You can't discuss the services of a college library without discussing technology and how it is used to make information available for staff and students
the consortium of Liberal arts colleges ( CLAC) consists of many of the top small schools- to enable them to share resources.
( for those who like lists)</p>
<p>Albion College
Alma College
Amherst College
Bates College
Beloit College
Bowdoin College
Bryn Mawr College
Bucknell University
Carleton College
Colby College
Colgate University
College of the Holy Cross
College of Wooster
Colorado College
Connecticut College
Davidson College
Denison University
DePauw University
Dickinson College
Earlham College
Franklin and Marshall College
Gettysburg College
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Harvey Mudd College
Haverford College
Hope College
Kalamazoo College
Kenyon College
Lafayette College
Lawrence University
Macalester College
Manhattan College
Middlebury College
Mills College
Mount Holyoke College
Oberlin College
Occidental College
Ohio Wesleyan University
Pomona College
Reed College
Sewanee - U of South
Skidmore College
Smith College
St. Olaf College
Swarthmore College
Trinity College
Trinity University
Union College
Vassar College
Wabash College
Washington and Lee University
Washington College
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Wheaton College
Whitman College
Whittier College
Williams College
<a href="http://www.liberalarts.org/%5B/url%5D">http://www.liberalarts.org/</a>
<a href="http://web.reed.edu/digital_asset_mgmt/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.reed.edu/digital_asset_mgmt/index.html</a></p>
<p>Don't know about most of these schools, but from what I hear about UIUC from people attending, the library is absolutely fabulous. I'll tell you in August. :)</p>
<p>Bern, the CIC (Big 10 plus the University of Chicago) also have access to each other's libraries. That's over 50 million volumes. But as someone pointed out, a lot of those are the same. </p>
<p>There is now an agreement between Harvard, Michigan, Oxford (UK) Stanford and Google...but I am not sure how this will work.</p>