NCSU Libraries Focus Online
Volume 22 number 3 - Spring 2002
Message from the Friends of the Library
President, J. Lawrence Apple
In essence, a library represents a linkage of minds of the past with those
of the present and future. When library patrons cannot find what they need,
the process of learning and research can be disrupted, slowed, or even stopped.
The library also offers a new source of wealth in the form of the information
it delivers, because the pursuit of wealth is largely the pursuit of information
and its application to the means of production.
Why support the Friends of the Library? A study of the history of the NCSU
Libraries indicates that because of the many needs the state legislature faces,
sufficient funding has not been available traditionally through state appropriations
to develop and maintain a world-class research library. Based upon historic
trends, future dependency on state appropriations will not meet the minimal
needs for either achieving the level of or maintaining the library among the
top thirty research libraries of the United States. Therefore, it is critical
that additional resources in the form of private funding be developed in support
of the Libraries' mission.
The NCSU Libraries is an institution confronted by an information revolution
that poses the challenges of preservation, acquisition, and distribution of
print or electronic information; instruction on how to find and use information
resources, whether paper or virtual; and the evaluation, procurement, and use
of new and high-cost technologies. The library cannot be left behind; thus,
the raison d'être for the Friends of the Library.
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