This college library is 11,000 square feet and will never hold a single book

(Image credit: Twitter.com/carocomms)

last updated 8 January 2015

Students at Florida Polytechnic University had better hope the internet never goes down on campus.

Florida Polytechnic University is new — it has only been open a few days — and features an Innovation, Science, and Technology Building, where most of the college's 500 students will take classes. On the second floor, students will be able to talk to librarians and have access to a digital catalog of 135,000 e-books, but there won't be a single paper book unless someone brings it in on their own.

The goal of the 11,000-square-foot library is to go totally green. Although there are printers in the building, people are discouraged from using them; students are urged to organize their research online. Director of Libraries Kathryn Miller told Library Journal that it's not how you get the information that matters, but what you discover. "We want our students to recognize when they have an information need, and be able to locate the relevant information to apply it in a scholarly and, ultimately, professional way," she said.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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