A plan to facilitate the future growth and development of libraries and information services at Marshall.

ibraries in the 21st Century will move from facility-centric to user-centric entities with a global reach and distributed collections. Libraries are moving away from the concept of large storage facilities with a just-in-case book distribution strategy to just-in-time information delivery systems. For the immediate future, the Drinko, Morrow and South Charleston libraries will need to allocate funds in a two pronged approach; the first will be the continued acquisition of books through funding projects such as “The Year of the Book.” The second approach will be the acquisition of on-line materials and web-text services to meet the on-line needs of the library.

Libraries of all higher education institutions in West Virginia should consider more cooperation and interdependency. Institutions could cooperate with building collections in areas of strength, acquiring joint site licenses for on-line data bases, sharing on-line catalogs and establishing a state-wide document delivery system. West Virginia should look to such programs as Ohio-LINK for the development of such a consortium and Marshall University should assume a leadership role in any such undertaking.

Although Marshall University is very fortunate to have three new library facilities, the storage limits of the combined libraries will be at maximum capacity by the year 2010. Planning must begin soon to prepare for future expansion and adjustment.