LIBRARIES: BLACK HOLES OR WHITE ELEPHANTS?

[Stanley]

LIBRARIES: BLACK HOLES OR WHITE ELEPHANTS?

BY STANLEY GRAHAM

Written April 1983.


(This was first published in the ‘ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN’ VOL. 76, NUMBER 6 in June 1983)



I knew I’d finally arrived as an academic when the gas meter reader paused one day on the way out of my house, looked at the walls lined with books and said “ Have you read them all Sir.” I replied with a non-committal grunt because of course I couldn’t tell him the truth, he wouldn’t have believed me. One of the most surprising and distressing facts I had discovered during my middle age foray into the realms of academe had been that one used or even gutted books, one did not, under any circumstances read them.

Even so, books are necessary and have to be found. Some are bought but the vast majority are obtained from the library whether it be local, college or university. The student cannot function without access to information. The most usual repository of this is the library, therefore the library must be used.

Here again, I got another shock. There is a vast difference between a leisurely saunter down the fiction shelves looking for a good read and the calculated raid on a certain section for particular information. I had to learn to identify and find a book or article. The most useful single exercise was the evening spent at the college learning how to use the library. Once this had been mastered, all knowledge was open to me.

There were of course occasional hitches in the way. The transition from Dewey to the Bliss system was a trauma only comparable to having to learn Serbo-Croatian dialects in order to study. I don’t know who Mr Bliss was but his fetish for full stops and lower case lettering has caused me many a squatting hour in the university library at Lancaster. The Lancashire Libraries Local Studies classification is another refinement on this ploy.

It is of course, unfair to criticise librarians for their classification system. They usually hate the damn thing themselves. On the whole, the librarians I have met have been a marvellously patient group of dedicated people who function as an educational resource directly comparable to the teachers themselves. There are difficulties but these are always overcome given time and the necessary budget to use the inter-library loan system. I can honestly say I was never held up for a piece of information because of lack of commitment on the part of the library staff.

How could the service be improved from the student’s point of view? Quite simply by ensuring that every book needed was on the shelf each time it was wanted. Obviously, no library could guarantee this even if they had unlimited funds but it does help if the budget is flexible enough to allow spare copies to be bought and time-consuming short-loan services to be operated.

The paradox is that the most cost and time effective improvements could be effected by the students and tutors. If people would re-shelve books correctly, return them punctually and refrain from tearing diagrams and pages out of them. If tutors would use restraint when compiling reading lists and go for quality rather than quantity. (If tutors were forced to read a book before being allowed to place it on a reading list?) All these factors would lead to less pressure on the library and more efficient use of the resources available.

I suppose the bottom line is that we have an efficient service now but it has a high profile. It is easy to slag the librarian off when the reason why we can’t find a book is perhaps because we haven’t full information. Most of the student surveys I have seen put the library high on the list of black spots in education. (I once heard a tutor describe the library at Lancaster University as ‘The greatest black hole of academic endeavour in Western Europe!) This is the easy way out.

So, get your act together lads, come up with the perfect classification system. Lobby the Local Education Authority and get a 100% increase in the budget. Put a free photo-copier in every library and pay for a blanket copyright fee, install a free coffee vending service and allow smoking anywhere in the building. You could even go for broke and install a toilet and a pool table. Start a dating service. The sad fact is that you would still get the flak. Perhaps a librarian’s most useful function is to allow her or himself to be used as an Aunt Sally for vented spleen and frustration caused by the pressures of learning. It might not be very noble but it is a useful function.

SCG/April 1983