Rather than be dissuaded by headlines that predict the demise of printed books, staff members of the Cornell University Library system have been busy, Anne Kenney Cornell's Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, told alumni at the Cornell Club in New York City Sept. 1. The university maintains branches at its campuses in Ithaca, Geneva, N.Y., New York City and Doha, Qatar, adding nearly two miles of books a year to its catalog and seeking new avenues for expansion, collaboration and sustainability.

"We recognize change is here," said Kenney. "Change is good. Change will always be there. We're busy on the change."

In recent years, the Cornell University Library has established partnerships with Columbia University in New York and Tsinghua University in Beijing; secured funds from the National Institutes of Health to encourage collaboration among life scientists; and assumed full responsibility for online ventures like arXiv.org, a database of nearly 700,000 electronic pre-prints that is transforming the fields of physics, mathematics and computer science, Kenney noted.

These innovations, coupled with a system that provides online access to the Cornell University database and extensive subscription services, have produced a library that is very different from the one most alumni remember.

"In my day we all lived at the card catalog," Matthew Palumbo '83 recalled. "One of the things I knew about the card catalog was that it was the best place in the university to meet girls. Now that the technology has changed; I have no idea what I would do if I were there."

To recent graduates like Heather Levy '10, the dominance of technology in modern life -- from Google and Facebook to the Kindle and the iPad -- underscores the library's continued relevance.

"It's very distracting to be at home," she said, recalling her time at Cornell. "If I'm at home I'll talk on the phone, I'll watch TV, I'll mosey. When I'm in deep prelim period and I have two chapters to memorize, I have to go to the stacks." She also noted her pleasure in continuing to have access to key databases as a recent alumna.

Current students, who consistently rank the library system as the No. 1 service on campus, concur. In the PULSE (Perceptions of Undergraduate Life and Student Experiences) survey conducted this year, Kenney said that 69 percent of Cornell undergraduates said they visited the library "often" or "very often," up from 42 percent in 2001.

"I think of the library as a place for people to gather," Kenny explained. With the card catalog online, the social real estate of the library has changed. "The place to meet people is now the Libe Café (recently renamed the Amit Bhatia Libe Café) or Manndible Café," Kenney said. "It used to be that you could not go to the library and drink coffee, even if you could smoke there! I'm a big believer that books and coffee go together."

"When you go down to the Libe Café," said Levy, "you are guaranteed to see someone you know." For her, a trip to get coffee frequently meant running into her friend Stephanie Rigione '10, also in attendance. "Steph had a seat in the Libe Café every day," Levy said.

"Every day," Rigione agreed, laughing.

"You can sit down, take that half hour, totally decompress," Levy continued, "and then go back into that isolated zone. That's never going to lose its value."

Neither, it seems, do the memories of it -- even if finding your way to that particular desk, chair or carrel meant traveling in the snow, uphill, both ways.

Claire Lambrecht '06 is a freelance writer in New York City.