Fast-forward: the transformation of excellence
Abstract:
Long before receiving the 2006 ACRL Excellence award in the College category, the Thomas Tredway Library at Augustana College (Illinois) served not only as a traditional library but as the College’s default student center, the place on campus for students to study, grab a quick meal in the coffee shop, and generally “see and be seen.” In 2010, an administrative initiative that would combine the library, student activities, and a new dining hall required the library staff to alter their customary incremental approach to change and to quickly re-examine their core mission and values. This chapter describes that examination and some of the challenges in planning a unique building while withdrawing a large portion of the print collection. It concludes with assertions and questions that should be addressed in this era of significant change in college libraries.
When I became director of the library at Augustana College (Illinois) in 2003, the campus magazine interviewed me for a brief story called “Carrying the Vision Forward.” It was an apt title, because the story depicted my intention to make no major changes in the library but to build on everything accomplished since 1990. That was not only the year our new library building opened, but the year that the primary library goals shifted to an emphasis on information literacy and a strong service orientation. Augustana’s president at the time referred to the library as “the living room of the campus,” and since Augustana’s students are 97 percent residential, the librarians often reminded themselves that the library was part of our students’ home. Having arrived as a new reference librarian in 1994, I was thoroughly steeped in that vision and had observed two previous directors strengthen and deepen it through new resources and initiatives. Our spacious, inviting library had become the most popular service on campus, as indicated by our own satisfaction surveys and by nationally normed surveys, administered by the College to graduating seniors. There was no need for transformational change, nor did I expect that such a need would arise during my tenure. Incremental, organic change – always keeping our eyes on core values and goals – had worked well for 13 years and, I believed, would work well for the next 13.
During my first year as director, we had the opportunity to join the large Illinois academic library union catalog and resource sharing consortium that had been started over 20 years before by Hugh Atkinson. This required leaving a local, multi-type library consortium that had also been in existence for many years. For both personal and political reasons, it would not be an easy leave-taking. But if we stayed true to our stated mission and goals, the correct choice was abundantly clear. We made the change, with solid acclaim from our students and faculty. It was one of many instances in which actions, whether major or minor, were taken based on deliberate consideration of our core principles. Our library was never one to place itself on the bleeding – or even the cutting – edge. We had neither the money nor the culture to do so. We shared an inside joke about how we carefully watched developments in the college library world, then jumped on board right after the cutting edge people were successful.
It was often observed that our library was serving as a default campus student center. We had designated “quiet floors” and “group study floors,” and over time, the designations became part of campus culture and were reasonably well observed. Our coffee shop was considered the most popular place on campus, despite its small size. Students studied there, faculty met with other faculty and with their students, music events were offered on Friday and Saturday nights when the library was closed. While it had started with only beverages and pastries, the coffee shop had added sandwiches, salads, and even soup. We had long allowed food and covered beverages in the library, and one day I learned that pizza deliveries were being accepted as long as they were delivered in the coffee shop. Well, I thought, as long as delivery people weren’t running through the library calling out names, so be it. The library had become the place on campus to study, eat, hang out, “see and be seen.”
In 2006, our library won the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in the College category. The judges remarked upon our excellent reputation on campus and how much we accomplished with a fairly modest budget. The award was proof-positive that our modus operandi had worked, so we stuck with it. Every year after that, our relationships with faculty grew stronger, the number of instruction sessions (including those in Special Collections) sky-rocketed, and we were trusted to assume leadership in many campus committees and initiatives. Given our service orientation – as well as our geographically central position on campus, our popular coffee shop, and our robust program of displays and events – the library became more popular every year as a place to study and socialize. Our primary challenges were dealing with the noise that resulted from heavy use of the library and the staggering workload created by our success. These challenges could not be ignored – but, as everyone said, what wonderful problems to have! I was concerned, but confident that we would mitigate these situations, as we had so many others, by thoughtful collaboration, incremental changes, and adherence to our mission.
And then came February 2010. Augustana’s president came to my door one mid-afternoon and, although I did not fully realize it at that moment, he pressed a fast-forward button that started our trip to the leading edge of library transformation. He talked about Augustana’s recent, unsuccessful plan for a new student center and the College’s almost desperate need for a new dining facility. Then he described a College trustee’s visit to the library. The trustee pulled a book from the stacks and noted that it had not been checked out in twenty years. He – and now our president – asked: Couldn’t we clear some of these unused books from the library and repurpose at least one floor?
Fortunately, the basic theme in this question was not new to me. Over the previous ten years, we had withdrawn paper indexes and print periodicals that were duplicated online. Students and faculty had voted with their feet – or more accurately, with their index finger on the mouse. Use of print indexes was nil, except in highly specific cases. Use of scholarly print periodicals dropped to almost zero, while use of online periodicals reached levels that the print had never achieved. Especially in the case of print periodicals, librarians worked closely with faculty, title by title, to withdraw. Some print was retained and some was given to faculty. Remaining titles were offered to other libraries (although we had very few takers) and many were recycled. Over time, almost everyone adjusted to these revolutions in format. In the freed up space, we provided more computers, study tables, and comfortable furniture to accommodate growing in-person use of the library.
We even had begun to withdraw some circulating books from a 150-year-old collection that had been only lightly weeded over its many years. Our spacious library, built just before the explosion of digital content on the web, included generous growth space for print materials. As a result there was a strong temptation – to which I, too, had surrendered in my years as a reference librarian – to keep almost every book and periodical because it might someday be useful to someone. And wasn’t bigger always better? The first question from library consortia, accreditors, the federal government, faculty, and casual visitors was always, “How many volumes do you have?” But in the last two or three years, we had followed the lead of a collection management librarian who wanted to move out some of the unused items. We had begun to pick away at obvious candidates, such as old textbooks and reference books that had been moved to the stacks, because that was the path of least resistance. We had freed up a few shelving ranges to provide space for seating. And we could see that the students would welcome even more.
I was also well aware of the trend toward bringing other academic support services into libraries. It seemed to have started with information technology services, but was quickly followed by writing programs, tutoring centers, academic advising, and others. Just five months before the president’s visit to my office, Goucher College had opened its Athenaeum, a remarkable blend of library, performance area, café, and other social and academic spaces. At Augustana, we had already accommodated our Reading/Writing Center in a space that used to be filled with shelves of current issues of print periodicals. The result had been a productive synergy and a significant growth in students’ appointments with tutors.
So, I told our president, yes, we probably could repurpose one floor that would be blended with an addition to the library, creating a combined library/student center/dining hall. Based on my reading, discussions with colleagues, and awareness of trends, I had begun to think about a new kind of undergraduate library even before the president came to visit. I knew that our library staff would be inclined in that direction as well. Over the next five years or so, we would have moved further down that road. But now we were in fast-forward speed. I had to tell my fellow librarians, the rest of the campus, and even our board of trustees all of the reasons that I had answered as I did. I had to present my argument for downsizing the circulating book collection and changing the overall nature of the library.
Back to basics
In Tredway Library tradition, I thought about core principles. Librarians sometimes bemoan the fact (with tongue-in-cheek) that library science has no “dead Germans” to provide us with a theoretical foundation. Maybe we don’t need them. Instead, we have India’s S.R. Ranganathan, whose deceptively simple Five Laws of Library Science (1931) have had enormous influence on modern libraries.
Perhaps most pertinent to the coming sea-change in the Tredway Library would be Ranganathan’s fifth law: “The library is a growing organism.” When libraries began, manuscripts were rarely touched by more than the privileged few. Books were chained to the shelves. Computers were nowhere to be seen before the later twentieth century, but a library without computers is now unimaginable. Times have changed – and they will continue to change. The library is not an inanimate thing, forever the same. It is a living organism, reinventing itself for the times – but always for the benefit of its users. Ranganathan’s four other laws all focus on the reader and on the use of library resources. Except for a library’s rare books and unique documents, its resources should not be protected and retained as symbols or artifacts. Libraries are not museums or warehouses. The first law is “Books are for use.”
Making the argument
More recent support for the vision of a new undergraduate library was easy to point out.
In a 2009 article, Yale University Librarian Emeritus Scott Bennett asserts that “the transformation of information from a scarce to a superabundant commodity” has moved the design of library space through various paradigms (Bennett, 2009: 181.) We are still in the midst of the most recent shift from the “book-centered” (or, perhaps more broadly, print-centered) library to the “learning-centered” library (2009: 181.) The growth and stabilization of electronic indexes and then electronic journals has led many libraries, including ours, to clear many square feet of floor space. This change occurred at the same time that an ever-increasing number of liberal arts college faculty began to assign collaborative group projects and students’ study practices began to change (Gibbons and Foster, 2007). In 2010, researcher Howard Silver found that 41–55 percent of all non-classroom study took place in the library and that, on average, 71 percent of all study in the library was in small groups (Silver, 2009: 73, 79). At the Thomas Tredway Library, the removal of bound print indexes on the main floor made room for the group study tables that were filled to capacity most afternoons and evenings. During the other hours, they were often filled with students receiving research instruction, either for first-year liberal studies courses or for upper level courses in their majors. In turn, group projects that require student conversations created student demand for designated “quiet zones” devoted to solitary work. As print periodical subscriptions were replaced by robust electronic versions, we cleared part of our first floor for silent study. Contrary to widespread predictions of deserted libraries, most academic libraries were experiencing more use than ever before. Our library’s usage rate, per full time equivalency (FTE) at the College, increased by 30 percent during the years of the electronic revolution – local proof of Bennett’s thesis that academic libraries are shifting their focus from housing print resources to promoting students’ learning.
The Tredway Library was well on its way to becoming the “learning-centered” rather than “book-centered” place that Bennett describes. The librarians had included the “library-as-place” as a major part of our strategic plan for many years. Our “living room of the campus” was a comfortable space where students could find easy access to periodicals, books, and computers; find reliable librarians to teach good methods for using these resources; drift over to the library’s coffee shop when they wanted society, food, and drink; and just generally “hang-out.” We created the environment we saw to be the most conducive, within our resources, for student learning.
Meanwhile, discussions of space usage and academic libraries as a kind of “third place” in students’ lives had become more frequent in both professional and popular literature (Freeman, et al., 2005; Montgomery and Miller, 2011). In 2009, Building Design and Construction reported that the most common functions for a modern academic library, beyond the traditional role of maintaining print collections and archives, include providing spaces for: individual study and quiet contemplation; collaboration, including group projects, lectures, book discussion groups, and so on; academic services, such as research instruction and tutoring centers; and information technology (Sens, 2009.) Beyond these strongly library-related functions is a broader vision that can include centers for teaching excellence, student media production and broadcasting, art galleries, and student activities offices. New studies on student learning support ideals that were at the foundation of the ancient Alexandrian Mouseion, the concept of the Athenaeum, and the nineteenth-century student unions of Oxford and Cambridge (Demas, 2005.) In all of these, reading, study, discussions, lectures, recreation, and dining were shared in community.
But what about those “superabundant” books that are crowding out our learners? Evan Farber, director of the Earlham College library from 1962 to 1994, promoted the concept of undergraduate libraries based on a teaching mission. This concept took hold, especially throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and the library’s role in teaching information literacy (or “information fluency” or “research skills”) is now so commonly held that it is taken for granted. However, Farber also urged college librarians to move away from “the university library syndrome,” a collection-centered, “bigger-is-better” view of the college library collection (Farber, 1974: 12). This corresponding idea was widely overlooked. Most college libraries continued to pride themselves on having built large circulating book and bound periodical collections. Accrediting bodies and professional organizations still emphasized college library volume counts. Few questioned the fact – or even knew – that 25–40 percent of those volumes go unused for 25, 50, 75 years.
Retaining books with little or no use is appropriate for university and research libraries. Their mission is to preserve the record of human knowledge and to support graduate, doctoral, and post-doctoral level research. But as Farber suggested, a college library that exists to support an undergraduate curriculum should contain primarily books that are accessible to the students and receive a reasonable level of use. Instead, today’s college libraries are struggling with huge, under-used collections that crowd out students, whose need for both quiet and group study spaces increases every year. Still, undergraduate library directors – as well as faculty, deans, presidents, and national library organizations – continue to proudly announce the volume counts of college libraries. On a practical level alone, volume counts become increasingly meaningless as libraries become increasingly digital. More importantly, they perpetuate an inappropriate model.
And that model is physically unsustainable. Buildings are too small to shelve every book acquired in the past in addition to new publications. Library books began crowding out users during the publishing explosion of the mid-twentieth century, but many college libraries sought to provide every book at their students’ fingertips and to proudly point to their large, comprehensive collections. Now colleges across the country are struggling with the result (Kieft, 2010: 28.) Excellent colleges have library collections so large and crowded that they are daunting to the students. In addition, the books occupy hundreds of square feet of valuable space. Thousands of new books are added every year. Most of these colleges do not and will not have sufficient funds to build and maintain ever-larger library buildings or storage facilities.
We simply cannot continue in this manner – and we need not. Efficient interlibrary loan and the robust resource sharing of library consortia are, relatively speaking, recent phenomena in the history of libraries. Perhaps that is the reason that we have not yet recognized their full significance and potential. Augustana College is fortunate to be located in a geographic area that is one of the country’s library consortium “heavens,” but there are many, many other resource-sharing groups. And if there isn’t one in the area, librarians should make forming one their highest priority. Then we must take it to the next level. Recently, discussions have begun on a regional and national basis with the goal of determining how many copies of any given book is “enough” copies, who should keep them, and how they should be shared. We must face the reality that every library cannot keep every book in perpetuity.
Of course, the next electronic revolution will be – already is – the e-book. Though long anticipated, the transition to significant use of e-books has moved more slowly than the transition to electronic indexes and periodicals. This slower pace is likely to continue due to several issues that vary in importance and in the time required to resolve them, including user attachment to the experience of print books, formatting differences in books that come from different publishers and sources, perfection and cost-reduction of hand-held readers, reasonable subscription relationships with libraries, and, above all, copyright. While many library users may still believe that everything on the internet is free, librarians know that the US Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 tightened copyright restrictions; far from being free, 74 percent of all electronic books covered by mass-digitization projects are subject to copyright restrictions (Newitz, 2010.) Copyrighted full-text books are available only through individual purchase or from a library. Even if authors break away from publishers, they are not likely to make their digital books available free of charge. Either the individual user will pay or a library will pay.
For practical purposes, nearly all of these problems will be resolved one day, even if libraries are not happy with the outcome. Despite continuing issues of “big deals,” staggering costs, and the difficult crusade for open source, the pricing models and delivery of e-journals for libraries have improved since the early days of their existence about 12–14 years ago. The same thing eventually will happen for e-books (although the recent pull-back in publishers’ willingness to allow electronic sharing is chilling.) College libraries, especially those like ours that are part of a large consortium, probably will use a combination of interlibrary loan, compact shelving, print-on-demand, and e-books to meet their students’ needs.
Of course, it must be remembered that most libraries, including Augustana’s, also maintain collections of rare books and manuscripts that will never be removed from the library and never fully appreciated or understood in digitized form. A growing number of college librarians agree that the time has come for our respective special collections to shine. Rare books and manuscripts provide students with a unique opportunity to develop critical thinking skills through analyzing primary documents, then building their own contribution to scholarly discourse. At liberal arts colleges throughout the country, special collections are increasingly used as student and faculty laboratories. During 2010–11, Augustana’s special collections librarians responded to 718 reference questions from students and taught 25 classes – three times the number of six years before.
A paradigm is hard to change
Regardless of increasing use of e-resources and the publishing and purchasing explosions since the 1960s, it is difficult to move on from the idea that a book is valuable simply by virtue of being a book and that any book placed in a library should stay in that library. And it is even more difficult when we challenge these ideas in the academy, where people have an especially powerful relationship with books. The college community’s passionate dedication to the traditional image of the library can hardly be overstated. But today, college librarians face the paradoxical issue of improving our teaching mission by expanding digital media and study space while reducing print resources. We face crowded shelves and little or no chance of funding for a bigger library or a storage facility (with required staffing.) We may be among the world’s greatest lovers of books, but we must also look at them with a discriminating, professional eye. Unlike our library users, we have obligations to a specific constituency and we understand the magnitude of dealing with hundreds of thousands of books. Yet if we propose to remove more than a few books from our libraries, we will be viewed as book and library destroyers.
Clearly, Augustana needed to launch a carefully considered series of discussions, committees, and written drafts – the traditional way of building academic consensus around a difficult issue. We needed the many years of working with faculty that we had as we downsized the print journal collection. Ironically, the ample growth space for the circulating book collection, included when our library was built, had become very attractive for a host of purposes other than shelving books. Now our tuition-driven College faced a pressing need for more student activity space, academic support services, and a new dining facility. These could not be postponed while we gradually persuaded the campus community that a smaller but more student-friendly collection was an excellent idea. In fact, if the trustees agreed and funding were approved, renovation and building would begin as soon as possible.
A task-force was formed, a planning architect hired, white papers circulated, and a speaker invited. We did what we could in the very short time frame that real life had presented. I should not have been surprised, of course, when I discovered later that these efforts had been largely ineffective, lost in the heavy work load and information flood of today’s academy. Lost also, I think, because faculty could not imagine that I was proposing to move away from a dearly held tradition and to significantly alter our beloved library. Often, I couldn’t believe it myself. Then I would return to core values, consult admired colleagues at other institutions, remember the professional literature, and keep moving forward.
Continuing challenges
“Moving forward” meant heretofore unknown levels of work and stress. As I simultaneously wrote documents and worked with the architect – not just to redesign a library, but to blend it with other functions – the librarians undertook a mammoth weeding project while coping with the rest of this massive potential change. Not surprisingly, we could find no best practices for such a task. Aware of the growing issue of huge collections in college libraries, several library consultants and other directors were working on collaboration, software, and services. So instead of finding best practices, we found ourselves as a beta site and first case study. There were no clear answers, but the support was nonetheless invaluable.
We decided to do an initial sweep of selected areas of the collection, removing only those books that had entered the library before 2003 but had not circulated since 1986, when our online records began. To save time, we would send those books to be recycled. In view of the short timeline, we might have wished to do all of the weeding this way, with only occasional discussions with faculty. Interestingly, our situation was a kind of testing ground not only for visions of a twenty-first century college library but for questions about who has the final word concerning library collections, and under what circumstances. Over the years, Augustana librarians had worked well with faculty through the ever-ambiguous “collaboration,” although final control of acquisitions lay with the librarians. Weeding had never been an issue, as it probably has not been for any other college following the “university library syndrome.” But it was about to become one.
With hindsight, I know that the plan for a partial sweep of unused books – especially when performed under such high stress circumstances – was an invitation to some kind of notable mistake that would raise a furor. For us, it was part of a reprint collection, written in classical Chinese, that was sent to the recycling center (Tracy, 2011.) The volumes were not being used, but should have been offered to another library or to the professor who was responsible for bringing them to our library in the early 1990s. The result was a flurry of shocked e-mails, intense discussions, and a local newspaper article (rife with factual errors.) The most regrettable part of all this was the sadness of the professor who obtained the books. Based on his long-held vision of what an academic library should be, he believed that once the books had been placed in our library, they would be there forever. And, in fairness, no librarian, at Augustana or elsewhere, had ever given him cause to question the accuracy of that vision.
I am grateful to say that Augustana’s administration stood by me and all of the librarians throughout these difficulties. Faculty concerns were answered and a new plan to collaborate with faculty on weeding the rest of the collection was devised. Throughout it all, our academic dean and president refrained from issuing commands and, instead, worked with us to develop a procedure for moving ahead. Through their actions, they supported the right of the librarians, in consultation with the academic dean, to set library policy.
Lessons learned?
As I write these words, there are no conclusions, no reports of the success or failure of our bold initiative. Augustana’s Board of Trustees has yet to formally approve the plan for what is currently called the Center for Student Life. Architectural drawings continue to be changed almost weekly, many books have yet to be withdrawn, security issues must be solved, and the list goes on. The professional occupants of the new building – unavoidably joined in a mostly friendly struggle to claim space – have not begun to form the kind of bond that will be essential for the success of this enterprise. Several years will pass before I will be able to assess and, perhaps, contribute to those prized best practices for other libraries.
Instead, I offer a short list of assertions and questions to be addressed in this era of significant change:
A strong, collaborative college library staff is the most essential resource of any library. Even in the most traditional library setting, a staff with high self-esteem, mutual respect, and dedication to serving the campus community is the foundation of everything the library is and has to offer. It probably is also the hardest and most time-consuming condition to reach. But without it, lasting excellence will not be attained. A time of significant change can easily destroy much that has been achieved if the staff is not a well-functioning, cohesive team.
Libraries have reached a crisis point in dealing with their print collections. We cannot go on keeping every copy of every book. The “university library syndrome” has caught up with us. Larger library buildings and storage facilities are not sustainable options for the vast majority of college libraries. We need regional – and even better, national – efforts to determine how many copies of each book we should retain collectively, and which libraries will keep them. Some of these efforts are under way, but far more needs to be done.
Who sets library policy at your college? This is a question not to be posed directly, if at all possible, but to be explored. If a collection is to be downsized or a major renovation undertaken, the question will inevitably underlie discussions that follow. The topic should be part of initial conversations with librarians and deans. Librarians must be keenly aware of support, or lack thereof, from upper level administrators before opening these subjects with faculty.
Librarians must lead the effort to change traditional images of the college library. This includes not only the issues related to large print book collections but the many possible faces of the library as learning commons, Athenaeum, and so on. Augustana’s version of the latter may be especially far-reaching, but other such efforts are frequently in the news. Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education featured a link to an article with the lead, “‘It Used to Be Just a Library,’” about Old Dominion University’s renovation of their library, complete with a bagel shop (Sizemore, 2011.)
The article stated that Old Dominion had not only moved their books to upper floors but had “jettisoned” some of them. I’m not certain, but I suspect that there was a larger story behind that breezy rendition of downsizing the collection. In many colleges, it will be a hard sell to convince faculty, administrators, and even students that a smaller, more curriculum-related collection will be in their best interests and that it is the only sustainable model for the future. Attachment to the traditional library model can be so strong in the academy that it is held as an article of faith, not to be touched by logic. I have observed it to be so. But we have to start somewhere and we have to try. If the issue of an unwieldy collection (either at present or in the future) affects your college library – as it does so many – the campus discussion should start immediately. Of course, it will have to start with the librarians themselves, and move from there to the academic dean or provost.
To be clear about this call for leadership: librarians must be leaders in moving forward but they also must be leaders in retaining core library values and in supplying documentation for what their users need. Keep good statistics, survey your students, and pay close attention to the recent anthropological studies of students’ library use. Do your own anthropological studies if you can. Several times throughout our planning, someone has asserted that today’s students no longer need or want quiet study spaces. I was never happier that I had all of those satisfaction surveys that showed students’ continuing desire for quiet spaces, in addition to the more social spaces. You also may be surprised by either the very traditional or the very non-traditional views about books that you will encounter. For example, an administrator may be surprised by your warning that many faculty will react with outrage at the open removal of books from the library – or they may react with outrage themselves. Either reaction would be grounds for careful education.
I hope that Augustana’s story will help you to begin carefully planned, collegial discussions that lead to action plans – or will help to prepare you for the day that a president, a dean, or a librarian at your college presses fast-forward.
References
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Farber, Evan. College Librarians and the University-Library Syndrome. In: Farber Evan Ira, Walling Ruth, eds. The Academic Library: Essays in Honor of Guy R. Lyle. Metuchen: Scarecrow; 1974:12–23.
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