Op-Ed: What Libraries Should Become
Before I begin, full disclosure: I am an undergraduate intern at Mugar Library this semester, and I work in the Digital Scholarship division on the third floor. Recently, I’ve been wondering what roles a library should play in a student’s life.
Libraries weren’t always the public mainstays that they are today. Before they inspired generations of readers and provided a safe haven for intellectual pursuits, libraries in America were stuffy affairs that depended on subscriptions and shunned the general public. The idea that they could be free was revolutionary; libraries as we know them today are a large departure from the early subscription-based entities they started out as.
However, despite their stuffy beginnings, they quickly established a precedent of accessibility that was ahead of the curve. I recently learned from a talk given by Jessamyn West (librarian and founder of librarian.net), that the Library of Congress had a reading room for the blind nearly a century before the American Disabilities Act was passed. While the reading room was started in 1897, the act wasn’t passed until 1990, almost a hundred years later.
The revolutionary thinking and quick adoption of new ideas pioneered by libraries in their infancy unfortunately feels as though it has dissolved into a lethargic state of mind, at least at Boston University. Yes, it’s true that Mugar Memorial Library subscribes to countless journals and it adds around 300 books a week (at no minor cost), that it also accept suggestions for new acquisitions and resources, and that it provides administrative support for researchers and students. This means that it has kept its institutional and academic status quo operating smoothly by maintaining the raw collection necessary for the university to function. But physically, it has only been glacially keeping pace with the changing technological times: it was late to add computers, late to add wifi, and it was furthermore a newsworthy event when these two simple improvements led to increased usership of the library’s spaces (literally, the Daily Free Press wrote an article about it). Mugar has stumbled into the new millennium by fulfilling basic requirements, but it continually falls short of what this university could help it accomplish.
Imagine what could be possible if someone reinvented the library by applying its fundamental founding principles and attitude to what we know technology can accomplish today. Progress is rapid. Since Mugar added 200 computers in 2009, things have changed: now, there’s a completely different way to make knowledge available for everyone in the best way possible. There is so much more that Mugar could and should be doing.
For starters, it could have its own app, and perhaps it should have had it five years ago. There are some no-brainers: students could be able to search the catalogue and request a book, get push notifications for events, book appointments with research librarians, reserve study rooms, and check hours. An algorithm could propose further reading suggestions based on books a user already checked out. But there could also be occupancy sensors for each floor, to determine which which study space is the emptiest. For checking out physical books, the app could use local gps to direct the phone to the correct floor and section of the library, to where the book is on the shelf. You could check the book out with the app, too. These technologies exist, and they’re used in our supermarkets. Why not our libraries?
An app is the easy part. The hard part is changing the physical space enough to reflect the needs of its community, in order to foster culture and exchange and ultimately help the university thrive. They have small events, archive presentations and competitions, but there should be books right when you walk in the door. There should be a strong relationship with the makerspace across the street. Mugar could consider taking every book that has not been checked out in the last ten years and moving it into storage to free up more space for studying, learning, making and doing.
Consider the souless search box that is bu.edu/libraries. While beautiful and google-ish, it dominates the page and obscures the reference guides, course guides, and news. And where is the capability for the student to respond? What about putting a simple poll up? Libraries of today function more and more as social incubators, and more and more social incubating takes place online. The fact that a notice about OpenAccess Week is displayed half-heartedly on the bottom right hand corner of the page is not a testament to a lack of enthusiasm by its organizers, but rather an example of the effects of the philosophy behind the design of the library webpage. In privileging the traditional scholarly resources, it holds everything else back.
The bottom line is that Mugar needs to be an adaptive, open, organically responsive entity -- and it needs to change its digital presence as well as its physical presence. It could foster community and knowledge exchange, and it needs to start by responding to the needs of its current users. Its twitter account is a step towards dialogue, but less than nine percent of the people enrolled in this university are followers. A better idea was the creation of Mugar Greene Scholars, the group behind the tremendously designed posters and videos about the library. The university could continue on that theme and sponsor senior projects in the school of engineering or class projects in computer science courses. They could start a task force, or have an idea contest so that students can have an active role in determining the library’s future. I stand by the opinion that in a university that has become so customer-service oriented, it’s laughable that the one institution that was literally founded to benefit the average person no longer does. So please, someone, start by putting a poll on the website. It’s time for Mugar to reinvent itself.