A rumor was moving around campus that the library was being closed at noon on Fridays as part of a cost saving program. Nothing could be further from the truth. Martha Mills, Dean of Distributive and Media Services, says the Friday closure allows library personnel time to sort through and remove old and largely unused titles from the shelves. She hopes to have this “dusty” work accomplished during the spring semester, in preparation for the changes that are coming– a complete library building remodel.
According to Mills, there are approximately 60,000 titles on the shelves and of these, only about 15,000 are circulated or used by students. The unused and older books are being filtered out and shipped to Better World Books who will then sell the books through an assortment of online marketplaces. They return 15% of the monies raised through sales to the library and any unsold books will then be donated to the National Center for Family Literacy, a non-profit company that the library chose.
When the reconstruction is complete, new books will be purchased to add to the titles that remain. “The trend now is virtual books,” said Mills, and the library will be adding to and expanding this capability as well.
This is part of a complete library building reconstruction project currently set to begin in January, 2012. This project is being accomplished with Measure J funding and, while the school is not allowed to alter the building’s “footprint,” it will completely change the interior of the 1100 library building as well as the layout of the different departments located within the building.
The challenging part of this reconstruction project is the temporary relocation of the various departments to other areas of the campus. The question of where on campus to move them (so that they can still function) is being worked on, along with the finalizing of the building interior layout. The first of these meetings took place on February 18,2011.
We at The Prospector will be following the relocation and reconstruction, and will provide information on where to find the departments when they move, as well as sharing some building plan overviews for the remodeled 1100 building. Look to both the print version of The Prospector, and the online version at www.theprospector.org.
The library is looking for students’ imput, and has put up a survey, which can be found at www.surveymonkey.com/s/6FQ85WF.
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