I love that the 2nd comment comes from toomanybooks, very appropriate, since that is the problem that UofC and every major library faces - stacks that are groaning with "too many books", and hundreds more coming in the door every day. I completely agree with the browsing and sependitify issue, and did some rooting around and found this article from Inside Higher Education:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2...d_using_robots
(I also love the title "A Hole Lot of Books)
This paragraph addresses the browsing concerns:
While the new library puts some works out of sight, the university has thoroughly considered which works will go underground. They include serial works that have already been digitized, special collections that were not able to be browsed in the first place, and large collections of state documents. Plus, there will still be more than 4 million books in the Regenstein library to be browsed in stacks.
I think of this as my spice cabinet - if it is filled to overflowing I can never find the Chili Powder when I need it. If I carefully weed out those things that I seldom use and put them someplace else, I have a much easier job finding the spices I DO use (and avoid buying 5 bottles of the same thing since I can't find it when I need it!). When I need that red food coloring at Christmastime I can get it out of dark storage.
I guess the plan is to make browsing a better experience by taking out all the extraneous stuff that you can't really browse anyway - all those journals are online, and people access journals by the individual article anyway. The things people do browse will be right where they always were, in those bookish-smelling stacks.