To the Editor:

Re: “Rippling Beyond Sibley,” Editorial, March 12.

Dean Kleinman,

As a former employee of Cornell University and as the former Assistant Director of the Knight Visual Resources Facility, I am writing to you to express my deep concerns over the recent decision by the College of Architecture, Art and Planning to shut down the Knight Visual Resources Facility.

I will attempt to write this column without sounding whiny, hostile or patronizing, but I can’t make any guarantees: It has become painfully obvious to me that our generation’s sense of social decorum is sorely lacking, particularly as it pertains to our behavior in the library, and that someone needs to address it.

From the private works of James Joyce to a copyrighted periodical of an aspiring chemist, thousands of unique books and manuscripts from the Cornell Library collection will be digitized and made available to the world through an expanded partnership between the University and Amazon.com.

The program allows anyone to purchase copies of the materials through Amazon’s BookSurge Print-on-Demand service.

Even with the growing development of e-book technology, Anne Kenney, Carl A. Kroch university librarian, believes that the printed word will always be around because people “still hold an abiding love for [printed] books.”

Yesterday The Washington Post printed the last edition of its eminent Book World, the weekly insert that stood as one of the country’s best book reviews. The story is what we’ve come to expect from print media today: plummeting subscription, faltering ad revenue, disappearing profits. Considered alongside the recent deaths of the Los Angeles Times’ and Chicago Tribune’s print book reviews, this seems to be the death knell for the form.

Next time you search the Cornell Library catalogue, don’t be surprised if you stumble across names like “Funky Four Plus One” or “The Treacherous Three” alongside “functional analysis” and “trials (treason).” The 8021 range is now home to Kroch Library’s newly acquired Born in the Bronx hip-hop archive, which was inaugurated last weekend with a groundbreaking conference on the origins of hip-hop culture.

Johan Kugelberg, a Swedish music journalist who formerly collected punk memorabilia, began putting the archive together in 1998, when he was introduced to hip-hop by a godson.

“He started bringing over records, and they kicked my ass,” he remembers. “I told my wife, ‘this is what I’m going to be doing for the next 10 years.’”

More than one million people visit Olin Library every year, according to the Cornell University Library website And judging by how hard it’s been to find a seat these days, that’s not hard to believe. There’s a good chance you’re reading this editorial right now in one of the newly-upholstered chairs of Olin Café.

But is your safety at risk?

This past year, Olin Library revealed plans for a massive renovation, involving a total overhaul and rebuilding of floors three through seven. The motives for the project are diverse; they range from concerns about outdated infrastructure to problems maintaining a constant temperature.

But it is also clear that safety issues have become increasingly pressing.

Olin Library’s renovation, scheduled to begin in 2009 will usher in a new age of technological expansion to supplement the library’s current services. The renovation entails a physical and administrative transformation that will accommodate the needs of faculty, graduate students and undergraduates.

The Olin Renovation Planning Committee is overseeing the project, which focuses on floors three to eight in its first phase. It has not yet received approval from the trustees, thus the plans are very tentative and do not provide many details.