Posted at: 09/14/2009 7:08 PM
By: David Springer

UMR’s Virtual Library

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Ten years ago, most college students would spend at least part of their time in an old fashioned library, doing research of some kind or other.

Now, most of that research is done online.

But one local college has taken that to the extreme, not that you'd know to look at it.

The University of Minnesota Rochester, or UMR, is small enough to fit on the 3rd floor of the small mall in downtown Rochester.

It only has about 400 students or so, but as we found out, size can sometimes be a little misleading.

The library at UMR is typical in most respects.

If it weren't for the occasional printout or the 100 words a minute student pounding on a keyboard, it'd be pretty boring.

But the physical size of the library hides its true nature.

"We only have 42 books, but in reality, when you look at it we are the 15th largest research library in America" says Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran.

And that's possible because this library is a virtual library.

"We are connected to the Twin Cities campus and so we have access to over 70-thousand online journals and e-resources. And then we have access to the whole physical collection of the Twin Cities which is just shy of 7 million items" says Sancomb-Moran.

Not bad for a library no bigger than a couple hundred square feet or so.

And not bad for the students in the school's new Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences program.

"By the time somebody writes a book on bio medical formattics and computational biology and gives it to me - it's out of date. So the online resources are much more useful for the students in most of their studies" says Sancomb-Moran.

The librarian at UMR says the only down side to a virtual library is if a student wants to get their hands on a real book - it takes a day or two.