Ye olde undergraduate library

Mangan, K. S. (2005). Packing up the books. Chronicle of higher education, 51(43), pA27-A28.

This article is of particular interest to me because it discusses changes to the undergraduate library at my Alma Mater, the University of Texas at Austin. I often used the computers in this library when I was a student from 2001 to 2003 and I had no Internet access at home. I also frequented the stacks for pleasure reading and for background material for several of the papers I wrote as an undergraduate. So I was disturbed when I learned that 2 years ago, all the books were removed from the UGL and it was transformed into at giant computer lab.

This article explains the changes that were made, justifies them and presents some opposing reactions from students and librarians. The UGL was restructured on the newish idea of an information commons. An "information commons" is a communal space that combines access to vast stores of electronic information (i.e. computer terminals with Internet access) with group study/social space. The idea is to encourage students to come to the library and study in a comfortable, social setting. To help students deal with the massive amount of information on the web, an internet-savy reference librarian is available to direct searches and suggest reliable sources of information. There is also a collection of reference books to refer to when the web falls short. The UGL at UT also includes a coffee shop. So now the library is a hang out spot as well as a place to study and check your e-mail.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. A student interviewed for the article complained that the UGL with books was much friendlier and easier to use than the much larger PCL graduate library. And my several of my UT peers have noted that the UGL had all the materials that an undergraduate would ever need. Materials at the much larger PCL tended to be much too specific for the needs of a student taking entry level coursework. I will say that in the year 2007, many of the journals required for paper writing are now available online, which wasn't the case in 2001 when I was in school. And as a periodical librarian, no one knows better than me that it is easier to print out an online article than to copy it out of a bound edition or, even worse, to print it off microfilm or microfiche.

My real concern is about the social space. I want to be clear that I am a big fan of group study areas and I do not believe that libraries have to be quiet places. But, I don't know if academic libraries should become places where people come exclusively to be social. Colleges have plenty of hangouts for students from the student centers, to the quads and dorm social rooms. The library should be somewhere where they come to learn and study, in a sense socialize with an academic goal in mind. I know that libraries want to increase the amount of people using the library but I think that can be more effectively accomplished by promoting services the library can provide like reference services or introductions to information on the Internet. I think it is more valuable to the library to have students using the library to enhance their education rather than as a space to chat with their friends. I don't know. This argument isn't very structured. I need to do more research on social space in academic libraries. I want to learn about what works and what doesn't in designing an information commons that promotes learning. I am considering writing a paper on the topic as soon as I get my ideas straight.