A plan to ship books out of Syracuse University’s Bird Library, to a storage facility four hours away, spurred concerns and compromise this week.

Suzanne Thorin, dean of libraries at SU, announced in 2007 that Bird would be moving 100,000 books per year, for the next 10 years, to a warehouse. But there have been recent concerns over the initiative, which is set to begin in spring 2010.

The reason for the move is overcrowding, Thorin said. Bird’s bookshelves are 98 percent full. They should only be 75 percent full to preserve titles and allow for expansion, she said.

‘There’s just not enough space on campus, not enough money, to build a facility on campus to hold them.’ Thorin said. ‘And books are still being printed, so we asked ourselves, ‘What do we do?”

Bird Library holds an estimate of 1.1 million physical volumes. The long-term goal is to get that number down to 800,000, said Charlotte Hess, associate dean for collections research and scholarly communication. As the library prepared to lessen the burdens of an overcrowded space, students and faculty expressed initial discontent over the move.

At capacity

To decrease shelf crowding, the library will move 100,000 books a year for the next 10 years to Clancy-Cullen Tri-State Depository in Patterson, N.Y.

The library explored about 15 options before coming to a decision, Thorin said. The Patterson facility was the most cost-efficient option in tough economic times, she said.

The cost of the facility is two-thirds less than it would cost to build a new warehouse or renovate an existing one in Syracuse. The first year the university will pay $78,000, and the cost will go up as more books are shipped over, Thorin said.

The books will remain part of SU’s collection and searchable through SU’s catalogue. Students must fill out a request form if the book they would like to check out is located offsite. They will receive the book within 24 to 48 hours, Thorin said.

With SU bringing in 30,000-35,000 new volumes each year, current shelving cannot support what has piled up, Thorin said.

The space created with the outsourcing will not make room for any study space. It’s solely to lessen shelf overcrowding.

The decision for an offsite facility is really the only option, Hess said.

Stacks of books clutter the first floor, separated from their appropriate sections upstairs. Books are crammed into attics and shelving is ‘100 percent jammed,’ Hess said. The result is a decrease in the library’s quality of service, she said.

‘Let me just say that this is a necessity,’ Hess said. ‘This is not some revolutionary thing. I mean look, it’s a fairly small building, and we add thousands of books a year. So obviously we’re going to run out of room. It’s a mathematical certainty.’

Shelving areas in the Warehouse and the Hawkins building used for archival materials from Special Collections are also at capacity. The Science and Technology Library in Carnegie Hall is full, as well.

‘We want to save the collection and the only way we can save it is to move it to another place,’ Hess said. ‘Otherwise we’d have to weed it and get rid of it which is the last thing we want to do.’

The move reflects a national trend. Syracuse is part of the Association of American Universities – a contingent of 62 schools. Out of those, 60 have moved books to an offsite warehouse. Harvard University was one of the first schools to implement the plan. It has expanded its collection so far that it now holds more books offsite than in its on-campus library.

Criteria

Library administrators and staff worked to develop specific criteria to determine which materials will be stored offsite.

These criteria include:

Journals available online, not including those where the online version does not include or poorly renders illustrations and images

Journals published before 2000 with no electronic version but that are available in full-text online or in print indexes

Journals that have ceased production or have been cancelled by the library

Books published before 2000 that haven’t been taken out in the past three to five years

Duplicate volumes will also be eliminated, as will the print version of journals that the library already subscribes to online

Books categorized as humanities will not be moved for the next three years

These criteria came about Tuesday in response to student and faculty concerns.

Subject to debate

Originally, the library planned to begin moving the humanities books because they were located on the fifth floor – the most overcrowded floor in the library, Hess said. This sparked concerns and a protest letter drafted by the English and textual studies department that was signed by 101 campus-wide faculty members.

The Oct. 26 letter, obtained by The Daily Orange, argued that just because books aren’t checked out doesn’t mean they aren’t looked at. It advocated for the importance of physically browsing a book while researching.

Jaklin Kornfilt, a professor in the language, literature and linguistics department, signed the letter. She said the move would be detrimental to browse-ability and humanities research.

‘It would be disruptive and not conducive to research,’ Kornfilt said. ‘It would really stand to change our lives here on campus in a very drastic way I think.’

Savanna Kemp, a junior English and textual studies and women’s studies major, took issue with the plan and started a Facebook event, ‘It’s 10:00 do you know where your books are?’ over the weekend. Kemp is calling on students to attend Wednesday’s University Senate meeting to voice their concerns.

Kemp takes issue with judging a book’s longevity based on how many times it’s been checked out.

‘Just because a book isn’t being checked out doesn’t mean it’s not being used,’ Kemp said. ‘I can’t think of the last time I went into the library and actually knew what book I wanted. I pull 10 to 12 books off the shelf, which then lead me to other books. It’s not a clear kind of thing.’

Thorin responded to faculty concerns by sending out an e-mail Monday to the humanities council listserv. She announced the library would not begin with the fifth floor humanities books. The humanities books will not be moved for at least three years to allow time to consult with members in humanities departments.

Amy Lang, a professor in the English department, said she’s keenly aware of the importance of having books physically available for any student studying the humanities. She said access to many of the reproduced titles and journals online lack the quality, illustration and layout that exist in their original form.

‘Students need to have the possibility of serendipitous finds,’ she said. ‘To see there are 12 shelves on their subject – that completely turns your head around to see that you have generations of work in front of you. And that’s not possible without books.’

Continuing Concerns

For Kemp, not all of her concerns have been put to rest. She’s still unhappy with the warehouse’s location four hours away.

‘They say they’ll deliver the book within 48 hours. I think that’s kind of silly because who sits down to study and takes a 24-hour break in the meantime?’ Kemp said.

She argues that with downtown minutes away SU should look into a solution closer to home.

‘Why can’t the university reinvest in the city that they’re making this commitment to? They’re investing in things like the Connective Corridor yet when they have the chance to benefit the city they don’t really take that opportunity.’

Kelsey Kobik, a fifth-year history major, plans to attend the University Senate meeting Wednesday. If SU wants to call itself a tier 1 research institution, Kobik said, it should be careful not to marginalize the library.

‘Books are the very definition of a library,’ Kobik said. ‘It’s a place where books or periodicals or journals are kept and if we take them slowly out of the library then it becomes something else entirely.’

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on November 9, 2009 at 12:00 pm