A full featured traditional library was another highly popular project proposal. To many of us, it seems a glaring omission for a school such as Stargate to not have a library equipped for research similar to those many of us had at school or in college. The working group decided to leave this project off the list of recommendations for the following reasons.

First, even with using the full amount of the Bond Allocation, we were uncertain that we could deliver a first-class project. Obviously, doing so would come with an opportunity cost of all of the other suggestions combined.

Second, research materials are quickly moving to electronic formats that do not require physical assets. Electronic assets are also more easily kept up to date, shared, and electronic access is already the state-of-the-art method of locating and working with most content. This is not to disparage the value of a first-class research library, but it does significantly mitigate the loss of this project.

Finally, were a library to be built, it would require ongoing unfunded expenditures for staffing, subscriptions, acquisitions, and general operations.