This commentary is by Garet Nelson of Lyndon Center, retired professor and library director at Lyndon State College.
It’s a death watch. Like family and friends gathered around a beloved family member, we are witnessing the slow, painful death of our local Vermont colleges at Johnson, Lyndon, Vermont Tech and Castleton.
It’s a death of a thousand cuts. The latest major injury was the announcement that the college libraries may soon be shut down.
Most eulogies list the important events and contributions of a life. Here’s what all members of our communities, including K-12 students, will be losing when the libraries take their last breath:
1. Access to an array of information resources in all formats: books, online resources, and knowledgeable librarians. Local citizens will lose access to online academic resources because they won’t be able to go to a physical library to use them. Academic database company contracts do not allow off-campus access to people not affiliated with the colleges, but locals can use the databases at the physical library.
2. Library staff teaching research skills one-to-one and in classrooms to all who need help, including the college community and the public. The libraries sponsor numerous programs for local K-12 students, home-schooled children, businesses and general interest for the public. These programs bring people into the colleges and are an opportunity to showcase some of the great facilities and possibly recruit students.
3. The death knell for the libraries by the college administration states that, after the death of the physical libraries, the libraries will reincarnate as “digital libraries.” But the libraries already are digital with 24/7 equal access and the cost of most electronic resources has always been shared among the colleges. This looks like a hollow “change” since the digital library already exists.
4. Local historical archives. The college libraries maintain local, rare and historical documents, books and artifacts in special collection areas like Lyndon’s “Vermont Room.” Special collections include online resources such as the college newspaper and yearbook archives and microfilm archives of local publications going back to the early 1800s.
5. The college libraries provide quality, quiet, comfortable spaces for individual and group study. Not to mention the art gracing the walls — paintings installed by the Vermont Arts Council “Art in Public Buildings” program and pieces such as the full-sized replica of the Winged Victory statue at Lyndon on loan from the Cobleigh Public Library in Lyndonville.
It seems likely that the proposed changes to the Vermont state college libraries are just a stop on the road to making the colleges all-online and eventually closing the physical colleges.
Certainly there is a place for digital resources and for some courses being taught fully or partly online, but there also is a need for students, staff, faculty and the local public to have access to resources in all formats — print and online — as well as humans to help them navigate and find what they need.
Further, if you think about it, the idea of closing the college libraries isn’t logical. Laying off library staff makes no sense, considering the monumental job of disposing of literally millions of dollars’ worth of materials and equipment owned by taxpaying Vermonters. Who is going to do the work?
It also isn’t logical to create more space for fewer students; enrollment at the state colleges is roughly half of what it was before the pandemic. Why is more space needed for fewer students?
It also isn’t logical to make a drastic move like this and not have a solid plan to use the space.