This commentary is by Rich Clark, professor of political science, and Linda Olson, professor of sociology, both at Castleton University.
On Feb. 7, students, faculty and staff at Castleton University learned of the school administration’s decision to convert the current library to an all-digital library, and consign our collection of printed materials to the ash-heap of history.
We sought to understand the reasons for this capricious, anti-intellectual, and heavy-handed decree. The two reasons given were declining circulation numbers and student preferences.
It is true that circulation numbers are down, not just at Castleton but at libraries across the country, including in research universities. First, increased availability of electronic items has taken a bite out of requests for print items, but ebooks have a limited appeal to scholars, students and the general public.
The desire among some for digital items has not been widespread; the so-called digital natives have not turned away from printed material. In fact, sales of ebooks in America plateaued in 2013, and have leveled off since then, while sales of books in print have continued to grow. Books in print outsell ebooks by a margin of about four to one.
Additionally, circulation statistics are only one means of measuring the use of printed material. Taking advantage of the quiet space in libraries — and access to printers — students and scholars will use printed material in the building without ever checking something out. These data are not captured because they are not as easy to compile as circulation figures.
But the more confounding reason for moving to an all-digital library is the claim that it is what the students want. This claim is supposedly supported by data from a survey given to students at the end of the fall 2022 semester, sending out general emails asking students to participate.
Neither faculty and staff nor community members were surveyed about their preferences, which apparently were not wanted.
The Vermont State Colleges Student Library Survey received 527 responses. Had it been a well-conducted sample survey with multiple contacts and measures to account for any response bias, that would have been a healthy sample, but alas, it was not. It is a convenience sample representing no one other than the actual respondents, 143 of whom are Community College of Vermont students.
Why a survey that was meant to make decisions about the libraries on the campuses of Vermont Technical College. Northern Vermont University and Castleton included CCV students, who have access only to a digital library, is not clear.
We have requested the raw data to the survey so that we might view the results without the CCV participants, but we have not received any response to that request.
The data is presented within the Survey Monkey site, showing only marginal results for each question. There are no tables illustrating any differences by campus, type of degree sought, or primary library used.
Nevertheless, a perusal of the marginal data would suggest that students are using the library for a wide array of activities, including class assignments, conducting research, and just reading. Forty-two percent of the respondents report “borrowing materials,” which is a relatively high percentage when one considers that only 50 percent report using the physical library. And a majority of students (57 percent) reported using the library at least once a week.
If we could assume that this was a well-conducted survey, then we would really question a decision that would eliminate a service used frequently by half of all students.
But this was clearly not a well-conducted survey.
Let’s begin with the means of recruiting respondents. The survey relied on emails, not sent from people known to the students, but from unknown administrators from the Vermont State Colleges. Rather than using multiple means of contact, the email was the only mode, sent in the weeks leading to final exams, when students are already overwhelmed and over-surveyed.
In the survey, there is no question that measures students’ use of printed materials. The questions centered on access to digital resources. The administration took tepid support for digital materials as evidence of indifference to printed material.
The survey asked students to agree or disagree with the following statement: “The library website and electronic resources (e.g. research databases, ebooks, ejournals) support my coursework and learning.” Yet there was no comparable statement about the degree to which printed materials support coursework and learning.
The survey also asked, “If you use a physical library, what in-person services are most important to you?” Respondents were given an array of options from which to choose, and “reading books” or anything related to using printed materials was absent among the choices.
They followed this question with another that asked “Which online library services are most important to you?” but never asked about physical or print materials. It appears that the survey had no interest in learning about students’ interest in or connection with printed materials.
There are several competent social scientists in the Vermont State Colleges system that could have helped in the survey design and analysis, if the administration thought the survey was important. This appears to be a poor attempt to feign support for a decision already made., rather than a catalyst for making such a decision.
This goes beyond being poor social science methods; this is outright deception.
