Puzzling over how to get to the uni and the town's residents to integrate better, they decided to smersh their two (slightly poor) library collections together into one $178 million co-venture.
It's worked amazingly well. Everything was running smoothly on the first day. They've combined the two catalogues (even though one used Dewey and the other the Library of Congress cataloguing system), and moved both groups of readers into a brand new building.
There are 150 data-ports in the building for laptops, about three hundred PCs for general use, and hundred laptops that can be loaned. See how long they last. (No wifi yet, though.) Looks like they've negotiated deals with all the SJSU academic database providers - so I can get LexisNexis ,the O'Reilly Safari. book collection, the OED and a stack of other for-money subscriptions if I access them from within the building.
The printed book collection really benefits from the merge. The usual popular introductions to non-fiction fields are all there, courtesy of the public library, and backed up with several large research collections if you're tempted to pursue any in more detail. I love deep, wide archives like this.
The selection gets more and more ethereal as you clamber up the seven floors. There's a browsing section on the ground floor, laid out like a bookstore, and at the very top, there are piles of SJSU theses, empty group study rooms and that hay-and-dust smell of old, hardbound stacks.
But my favourite moment was when Quinn and I were snooping around the pop fiction section. Someone leant on the "Mystery" bookshelf...

Danny O'Brien's Oblomovka Aug 8 2003