Books & Libraries (Again)

"I will try to keep this short since the battle has been lost. I will not repeat all the arguments endlessly made about the aesthetic beauty of books, the wonderful musty smell of the stacks as one browsed through them, etc., etc"

   The picture above and the lines below it are from a post I provided back in 2016, which bore the title: "The University Library: A Last Stroll for a Lost Cause." In it, I lied: it was not my last post about the subject and it was not short. While I am, yet again, raising the issue, I will at least be brief.

   The issue, for those of you who understandably don't worry much about what is happening up at the academy, is that university libraries are being emptied of books. There are many reasons for this trend, but the surprising thing to me is that even the librarians are being 'trendy' in support of relinquishing the space. It seems to me that when the provision of space becomes your primary purpose, you should seek a job with the folks in the Physical Plant Department.

    Why am I again dwelling on the subject of stackless libraries, particularly during a time of the  coronavirus? For two reasons: 1) I was pleased to see that some Senators have raised the issue up at Western and 2) because of this article, which indicates that there are a few others still fighting for a cause which has been lost.

 "Keep the Books on the Shelves: Library Space as Intrinsic Facilitator of the Reading Experience,"
James M. Donovan, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 46, Issue 2, March 2020. Abstract
Library literature frequently reports projects to remove print collections and replace them with other amenities for patrons. This project challenges the untested assumption that the physical library itself serves no useful function to its users unless they are actively consulting books from the shelves. The alternative hypothesis is that readers benefit from the mere act of studying while in a book-filled environment...

Even granting the desirability of these additions ['maker spaces'] to the library environment, the literature focuses its discussion to defending the need for such improvements while spending comparatively little on calculating the costs of culling the print collections. Often the print materials are spoken of in disparaging terms as constituting a “museum” or “warehouse,” giving the impression that the areas to be renovated are presently dead spaces that serve no useful purpose. The benefit of discarding the books is treated as self-evident....

This belief, however, has no evidence to support it. It has instead been taken as an article of faith that books can be discarded and replaced with digital alternatives, freeing the space to then be used for popular amenities. No harm befalls the library from such changes, runs the argument, because the information content has remained the same. But what if libraries are not fully reducible to the information they contain?

Conclusion
Certainly as a profession we should scale back the evangelism about discarding physical books. Otherwise, worried to prove their continued relevance, librarians may inadvertently deconstruct the very institution that affords them the unique role in cultural life they instinctively strive to preserve. With the best of intentions they risk inflicting an irreparable harm upon not only the collections they hold in trust, but more importantly upon the patrons who expect them to provide an environment conducive to study and learning.

Sources:
   Some of the questions about the use of library space at Western were raised in the Senate meeting of Nov. 15, 2019, and in the meeting of Dec. 6 there are some indications that these are being considered.
   For my other posts about this issue see:
"The University Library: A Last Stroll for a Lost Cause"
"Actual Libraries"
"Library Lamentations: Stackless Universities"
"Libraries and Space"
"Empty Rooms"

Post Script: 
   I used to work in the Western Libraries. The person who helped me get my first job there when I was a student, recently passed away. The last email I received from him concerned this subject. The article recommended in it is well worth reading.
"The Books of College Libraries Are Turning Into Wallpaper," Atlantic, May 26, 2019.
"University libraries around the world are seeing precipitous declines in the use of the books on their shelves." Some samples from it:

When I tweeted about this under-discussed decline in the use of print books in universities, several respondents wondered if, regardless of circulation statistics, we should keep an ample number of books in the library for their beneficial ambience. Even if books are ignored by undergraduates, maybe just having them around will indirectly contribute to learning. If books are becoming wallpaper, they are rather nice wallpaper, surrounding students with deep learning and with some helpful sound-deadening characteristics to boot. If that helps students get into the right mind-set in a quiet, contemplative space, so be it. Maybe they will be more productive, get away from their distracting devices, and perhaps serendipitously discover a book or two along the way...

But there is another future that these statistics and our nostalgic reaction to them might produce: the research library as a Disneyland of books, with banker’s lamps and never-cracked spines providing the suggestion of, but not the true interaction with, knowledge old and new. As beautiful as those libraries appear—and I, too, find myself unconsciously responding to such surroundings, having grown up studying in them—we should beware the peril of books as glorified wallpaper. The value of books, after all, is what lies beneath their covers, as lovely as those covers may be.