This commentary is by Charlotte Bill of Enosburg Falls, a lifelong Vermonter who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UVM, taught in northern Vermont K-12 schools for 10 years and since 1984 has worked in adult education and literacy. She has taught for Community College of Vermont and in Johnson State College’s external degree program.
A Texan rode into town and is hurriedly gutting the Vermont State University library system. Actually, VSU President Dr. Parwinder Grewal is not Texan, but he arrived in Vermont via Texas, a vastly different state from Vermont.
With a Ph.D in zoology, Dr. Grewal is highly educated. However, he and his team do not understand how integral the libraries of Johnson, Lyndon, Castleton, and Vermont Technical College are to the academic excellence of these schools.
VSU administrators claim the decision to make the libraries “all-digital” effective July 1 is data-driven, but despite their scientific backgrounds, their data are flawed. They cite decreased library usage, but these data are Covid-era. They also conducted a digital-only survey of students and received a positive reaction for a digital-only library. However, the survey’s response rate was barely 10 percent.
How many of the 90 percent who did not respond did so precisely because they limit screen time and depend on nondigital library resources? We don’t know, because a digital-only survey is inherently biased.
I write from the perspective of more than 30 years as an adjunct instructor for the Community College of Vermont and Johnson State College (now NVU). Though retired from that role, I denounce this plan to remove scholarly books and journals from VSU campus libraries and distribute them to “communities,” e.g., community libraries.
Unfortunately, Dr. Grewal and his team seem not to understand profound differences between academic and community libraries. Each has a different mission, and community libraries are not equipped to deal with academic books and journals that would be dumped on their doorsteps. (In the old days, an incinerator would have been the recipient).
However, VSU will disingenuously be able to claim to have donated the materials rather than take the blame for sending them to the shredder/paper-recycler, which is what will happen anyway because our community libraries do not have space for this academic material nor is it consistent with their mission. In essence, it’s sending the materials down the Orwellian memory hole as Winston does in “1984.”
Many, if not most, of the materials are not digitized and never will be. They will be lost forever. Having paid Vermont taxes for more than 50 years, I’m horrified by such thoughtless destruction of resources purchased, in part, with tax dollars.
A Feb. 10 Vermont Digger article paraphrases Dr. Grewal: “But transitioning to a digital library is ‘the future,’ he said. ‘So we have to go that direction.’” Dr. Grewal is wrong. A 100 percent digital library is not the future.
Do not mistake me. I am not against digital libraries. Far from it. Digital library resources are fabulous and have immeasurably enhanced traditional library resources. However, existing library stacks are filled with treasures that are available nowhere else, and they have been freely available throughout the Vermont State College system through interlibrary loan, a service my students and I used frequently.
VSU’s Feb. 7 announcement claims that interlibrary loan will still exist. Sure, you can lend digital material. Yet how can there be meaningful interlibrary loan if campus libraries have no printed materials on their shelves to lend?
The Digger article quotes a Castleton English major asking, “’Why can’t we have both? Why can’t we have a digitized library? Why can’t we have a physical library?’”
The only defensible answer is this: “Yes, you can have both!” That’s the future: a vibrant college library system that combines the best of the materials on the shelves with the best of materials available digitally.
I urge the VSU administration and board of trustees to engage in a far more thoughtful process to make this happen. I urge Vermont politicians, citizens, college students, future college students, and taxpayers to oppose this hurried and ill-conceived plan and to demand that it be abandoned.
We can provide education differently in Vermont from the way they do it in Texas.