Western history professor Johann Neem wrote an article for an online newspaper, Inside Higher Ed, called Reviving the Academic Library, published Nov. 19.
Neem said libraries are moving away from their core mission of aiding the scholarly work of the university in an attempt to attract more people.
However, Dean of Western Libraries Christopher Cox said he believes the library's shift toward user-friendly use of space and electronic collections poses no real threat to the core mission of Western Libraries.
Western history professor Johann Neem:
Western history professor Johann Neem. Photo by Hailey Tucker
I think that it’s both yes and no. On one hand there’s a lot of committed people working in the library that are thinking to build the collection, to make it more accessible to students and for faculty. But around the nation—this is true at Western too—there is this desire to transform the library to be, in a way, more consumer friendly and to use the limited resources libraries are provided to do these other things.
Could you give an example of how libraries are moving away from their core mission?
There was a recent revolt at Syracuse University in New York, where students and humanities faculty prevented the library from moving significant portions of their stack out of the library in order to develop what they would call a new learning commons. Both students and faculty said wait a second, it’s not that we’re against student-centered learning, but the library needs to do certain things well first. And there was a fear that the library was moving away from its core mission by moving its actual collections to make room for other things.
As more archives go online, do you see the need for more computer labs?
One of the arguments is that those of us who think of archives as materials on the shelf don’t really understand how the world is changing. We really don’t know how well electronic archives are going to be preserved. So one of the challenges with journals or books or old records [is that] there isn’t a clear understanding if they will be available 100 years from now.
Dean of Western Libraries Christopher Cox:
Dean of Western Libraries Christopher Cox. Photo courtesy of University Communications
If you were to walk around the library, you would see we’re maxed out in terms of collection space. We have a lot of valuable materials, [and] we can’t even place them in a coherent way that allows people to find what they’re looking for when they go through the building. We are looking at off-site storage for some of the materials. Right now we are looking at what materials are low usage but still have value to the campus.
If the collection was more digitized, do you think you could utilize the space better?
In my view, you see the trend that journals are going to be digitized, and more are going to be archived digitally, so over time they are going to be less of them physically in the building. More collections are going to be online, which is the way most students and faculty are going to want to access that type of information. When it comes to books, print books aren’t going anywhere.
Would adding more computer labs and student study space affect the core mission?
In my view they don’t. You’re never going to have enough computers for student requests; we know this from the labs on campus and the number of laptops we have in circulation. But students now study in front of a computer; they use computers to digest knowledge, to create presentations. I think what we’re looking for is to sort of catch up to things.
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