When Bruce Miller took up the position of head librarian at the University of California, Merced in 2001, the plan for the new library was to use the University of California (UC) system's rich base of support as a launching pad for something great and extraordinary: a model academic research library for the twenty-first century. This article describes the planning process for the library as a physical space and as a source of information resources, and lists three "first principles" for creating a twenty-first century research library: (1) "What do we want to do?" comes before "How do we do . . . ?"; (2) Be masters of technology, not slaves to it; and (3) Plan bravely. Having adhered to these principles in the planning stages, the UC Merced library is not wed to any particular technology and is free to abandon any technology when its time has passed.