Not too long ago, there was a major ethnographic study of how college students actually use libraries for research and learning demonstrated the degree to which students make use of libraries and librarians: not much.

The fact is, college libraries now serve multiple purposes. If I take a college tour, and the tour does not include at least a cursory look at the lobby of the library. Then I double back after the tour and try to figure out why. Some of them are palaces for the studious. The library at Grinnell College has tiered study carrels that all face the windows, each with its own comfy study chair and lamp.

Libraries also do store a bunch of stuff. But as the world goes digital, some of that stuff can be stored off-site, away from campus, and held for those who really take an interest in 16th century mining techniques in Serbia. Some libraries, like Widener Library at Harvard, are gigantic, with many sub-basements and tunnels connecting to other libraries. Being something of a geek, I always enjoyed studying in a library.  Something about the smell of all that ancient paper, the binding glue, the leather-bound volumes helped me take my task seriously.

But libraries have always been social spaces, too. Some of the rooms in large libraries are places to meet people, pass a few pleasantries, or to make eyes at one another. At my alma mater, it was the ’02 Room where more social interactions took place. The stacks (yes, that’s where I hung out) were a sort of solitary confinement that people enforced upon themselves to get their work done.

The last decade, however, has taken the social aspects of the library to new levels. At most places, you will find that each floor–or parts of floors–that are designated as “high volume,” “low volume,” and “silent” workplaces. At some, you can barely hear yourself think above the roar of the cappuccino machine, which has become de rigeur on an increasing number of campuses (and parents wonder why college costs keep going up…we’re all addicted to lattes).

Anyway, I have begun to ruminate on the place of libraries on college campuses, and I did this short little video at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on a recent trip there. Libraries will continue to evolve. This video points to the fact that the digital age may actually allow some colleges to recover beautiful common spaces that had to be refitted to hold “stuff.”

Have a quick look. Or you can read the transcript below, if you are so inclined.

Right now I’m on the campus of Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I’m in the library. It’s a very nice space, but I noticed a couple of things that were kind of interesting. This room is a vast, old room. Architecturally, quite nice, but you can see here behind me that these metal shelves were put in here—this is the periodicals room—and to shelve periodicals; so there’s a copy of the London Times, Le Monde, La Stampa from Italy, Die Zeit from Germany; all these newspapers and then periodicals, including scholarly journals.

An interesting phenomenon happening on campuses today is that all of these periodicals are being eliminated because everything is available digitally. There are some libraries that are actually moving their entire book collections off-campus so that they can repurpose some of the buildings and the storage spaces. So you can see that this room—I don’t know how many years ago, but not all that long ago—was divided up, and they put these metal shelves in to actually create more storage space. Well, now the storage space is all on a computer chip.

It’s going to be interesting to see what colleges do with their space—if they repurpose it and if so, what are they going to repurpose it for?  I’ve talked before about the fact that a lot of common spaces on campus are not used that much. Because students are connecting via Facebook and text rather than actually congregating in particular places as they used to. So I think college campuses will make a pretty rapid evolution to repurposing the spaces that they use. It’ll be interesting to see.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Right now I’m on the campus of Union College, which is in Schenectady, New York. It’s raining right now. Which always has an impact on a visit. Because it’s kind of gray and cloudy and drizzly, but a beautiful campus. And you can see the Nott Memorial behind me. That’s a memorial to one of the longest-serving presidents of the college, who was very much of a polyglot. He had a lot of different interests as an academic. But it was explained by the director of admission that that sort of philosophy of this guy Nott is very much the philosophy of Union. Union’s only about 2,100 students. But it has engineering, which makes it one of the smallest colleges in America that offers engineering. So technology is a big thing here.
But I want to mention two things.

Freshman Writing Program

First is that like many other colleges, they have a freshman writing program called the Preceptorial. And this is a course that has research on it, but it is an introduction to college writing. That’s very common on colleges campuses.

Sophomore Research

But the other requirement that I thought was interesting to learn about was the sophomore research requirement. There is a course that every student must take that helps them become researchers. To learn how to actually do research at the college level. And one of the things that the director of admission mentioned was that these courses teach students how to use the library.

How to Use Libraries for Research

Now, that, on the one hand, could be a turn-off for people. Because if they — come on, a college, I should already know how to use a library. But you know, I really think this is a fantastic recognition of what students do and do not know when they enter college. Students may know how to write. They may have a really good writing background.

Also they may know how to analyze things like primary documents,. Maybe they’ve taken an AP class or an advanced class where they’ve been required to analyze and make sense of primary documents. But in most cases students have not actually learned how to use the library and find academic articles on topics that interest them.

They know how to use Google. They know how to use Wikipedia. But how do you research academic journals and find, using things like key words. Those boolean things, you know, boolean is a little bit old-fashioned now with all the kinds of library sciences going on. But really learn how to find the information that they need in order to be good academics.

Senior Thesis

So when students at Union go on and do their senior theses — most students, apparently, at Union do theses — when they’re going on to do their individual research, they’re prepared. They have that support. It is not just assumed at Union that every student coming in has that experience.

So it was kind of funny when the admissions director was talking. “We’re going to teach you how to use the library,” I think some kids might be turned off by that and say, “This is too elementary, I don’t need to learn how to do that.” But having been a professor myself, and having, at the introductory level, having to put together seminars in the library so that I could teach my students how to do it. I am totally, totally comfortable with the idea here at Union, that they do need to teach these skills, and at Union, they are doing it.

So fantastic liberal arts college with strong engineering. And an ethos that is very multidisciplinary and broad as well as deep. Certainly someplace you should consider if you want a liberal arts college. Or if you want to learn how to properly use libraries for research.
 
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