This commentary is from Bob Joly, on behalf of the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum board of trustees and staff.
To the board of trustees and the chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System, Hartness Library Director James Allen, members of the Senate Education Committee, Sen. Jane Kitchel, and Vermont State University President Parwinder Grewal:
We have followed the reports from your meetings with the VSU community, testimony to the Senate Committee on Education by President Grewal, plus the original plan (to shift to a digital library system at all Vermont State University locations) found in several places online. We know you have received thousands of comments about this plan.Â
We want to focus on two aspects that involve public libraries which have been put forth in various comments made by VSU administrators over recent weeks.
1. Interlibrary loan is an important resource for patrons of most libraries, including academic libraries.
You have reiterated that you will provide your students’ access to requested physical books. Interlibrary loan has been mentioned numerous times as one of the ways you will do it.Â
We want to make clear to you that interlibrary loan is a reciprocal resource between libraries and is entirely voluntary. No library is obligated to loan to another library. The interlibrary loan system is dependent on libraries that maintain physical collections.
It is expected all libraries will do their best to provide their patrons with the books they need from their own collections before requesting other libraries’ loan materials they have paid for from a collection they pay to maintain.
A digital library cannot expect other libraries to shoulder the expense of loaning physical materials to them if they are not maintaining a collection for their patrons and to share with other libraries. Interlibrary loan is an expense to every library, both requesting and lending.
Please make an immediate effort to contact the libraries you anticipate using for this service, including Vermont public libraries, to see if they will loan to you under your current plan.
2. The second piece in your plan that concerns us is your comments that you will be donating much of these collections to local libraries.
You are not specific about this in the plan that is currently online. Unfortunately, the Athenaeum is in no position to accept any books from the Lyndon campus library. There is no space in our building for any donated books from that library.
We wish we could accept the art book collection, for instance, but it is impossible for us to house them. The Cobleigh librarian in Lyndonville also stated this at the public meeting on the Lyndon campus.
In closing, you evidently did not contact any public library in our area about this plan before making it public. This was a regrettable lack of communication on your part.
Please in the future do not make assumptions about what the public libraries will or will not do without discussing it with us first. Thank you.