September 4th, 2024 | Work Study

I teach at a small university and this summer we will be merging with a few other small schools to become the Vermont State University. This was to be done to save money. Apparently, part of that plan includes getting rid of our circulation libraries. All of the book, journals, periodicals, audio books, picture books, collections, DVDs and CDs are going to go into the recycling bins on July 1, 2023. They say that they will disperse the contents to the community at large, but that does not include faculty or students and the local libraries are not in a position to take on my little school’s enormous academic research catalogue. 

Do you think you could be a Sweetie and click the link below and tell the people in charge of this misguided delusion what bell-ends you think they are? Or you could cite that only 10% of the students responded to the survey about this that they sent out. Because they sent it during finals. And that of that 10% (526 students), over 100 of them were not seeking degrees and had no reason to ever set foot on campus. Or that of the 50% who responded to what the library should do in the future was either Nothing, Expand resources and books, or Expand hours.

The link to have a say is right here:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/we-3-our-state-college-libraries-and-athletics?source=direct_link&

A few pictures of what they want to get rid of:

The students bought it for the school. I wonder where it will go...

The entire collection of Life Magazines are going to wind up in the recycling bins.

There are two other banks of microfiche that are also going to get tossed. I wonder how much of them have been transferred to digital images...

No more free movie nights in the dorms. 

The life-sized Human Anatomy book that has served so many nursing, physical training, and sports health students is going in the bin too.

Who needs free audio books? Can we say ADA violation? I knew we could!

Pretty sure this hasn’t been digitized.

And then there are the books you don’t want on your search history, but exist in the stacks. Or the ones you don’t know to look for until you walk past it. 

Tracing the iron’s path