There is a really interesting, though distressing, post on the New York Review of Books site about the problems faced by the Warburg Library. Read it here. The post has an interesting history of the library, but more important for our purposes is that it brings out a number of important themes that we've already touched on, and that we will see over and over. Among these is the importance of the uniqueness, rather than size, of the collection, the mission of the library, the relatively rarity of open stacks for a European library, and a unique classification system.
I found this sentence particularly interesting: "The library is designed not simply to make information rapidly accessible—as a search engine might—but to shape and channel scholarly investigations." That's a very important point. Remember it when it comes to the collection development exercise, but more importantly when it come to reading Everything Is Miscellaneous.
I'd be curious what your thoughts are on the Warburg. Feel free to blog about it, or to incorporate it into to your reading journals.
