The Hood College Beneficial-Hodson Library recently announced in a campus-wide email that it will be moving forward with plans to reduce their print collection.
“As part of the Campus Master Plan, the library building will be renovated into a contemporary learning commons, bringing together collaborative learning spaces and critical academic support programs under one roof,” said Toby Peterson in an email to the Hood Community.
Peterson, Library of Access services, says that the idea is for the various academic centers around campus to all be housed in the library, which he says will help create a better and more effective learning environment.
“The building is going to be renovated to include other academic support programs, like IT, CAAR, maybe the center for teaching and excellence, basically to get us all under one roof,” Peterson said. “So we can offer better services to students and become like a one-stop shop.”
To make room for these changes, the print collection will have to be reduced. Peterson said that the Hood Library has teamed up with a company called Green Glass, Sustainable Collection Services. This system gives the library a database of all our print books, and statistics on how often they are taken out.
“Of course, we [don’t plan to remove] our faculty publications, our alum publications, or special collections, our reference collection” Peterson said. “We didn’t even want to consider weeding those.”
The books that will be leaving will be items that have not circulated in at least over twelve years. Additionally, we will continue to be a part of the Inter Library Loaning system, meaning that we can get other books from Maryland very quickly.
Peterson said that different sections will be handled differently. For instance, many computer science books will be leaving, since these books go out of date at a high rate. Alternatively, history books will be handled more carefully, as their content might not be quite as dated.
Students have expressed a variety of different opinions to the changes happening, and what it could mean for the future of the library. “As a student worker at the library, and someone who does book mending, I feel like depending on the books it’s a good idea,” senior Phillip McCarty said. “We can use that space for other things that they want to put in.”
McCarty says that many books have not been used in for fifty years, and that if no one is checking them out, there is not a point in keeping them.
Some students have expressed concern that the library will not keep the books that they enjoy. “I love the library, and I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it and the books that are there, so I’m scared that the books that they’re gonna weed out are going to be books I would’ve used,” sophomore Una Regoje said. “I hope that they will be weeding out those old type of books that nobody actually reads or uses, but I hope they don’t take out any type of literature.”
Peterson also says that students are more than welcome to voice their opinions regarding the changes. “I think it’s important for students to have a say. I would love to get some interest back,” Peterson said.
If you are interested in having your voice heard in the reducing discussion, email peterson@hood.edu.
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