Library falls short of Tier-I quality

Like judging a book by its cover, a library’s value should not be measured by the building that houses it.

While the Utah State University library has just opened a new, state-of-the-art facility and has a competent staff to operate it, it falls well short of the needs the university has for it, university officials say.

“The library is pathetic the way it is right now,” Tamal Bose, department head of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said. “Compared to other university holdings, it’s an embarrassment.”

Linda Wolcott, Vice Provost of libraries and instructional support, said because enrollment is down and the pressure that is being put on its budget, the library is moving in the wrong direction.

“At the rate we’re going, we’re going backwards,” she said. “We’re getting less for our money and we’re getting less money. We’re stretching that dollar really, really thin.”

Wolcott said a first-class library is one of the most important things a Tier I research university needs.

“It’s absolutely critical,” she said. “You can’t have a great university without a great library. All top institutions have libraries that are on top of things.”

Wolcott said libraries are much more than just a collection of books.

“They also have electronic resources,” she said. “And they’re not free. Users take that for granted. They don’t realize that we pay for them.”

Wolcott said it is a common misconception that electronic versions are cheaper than hard copies.

“It’s not any cheaper electronically than it is in print,” she said. “Sometimes it costs more.”

Due to budget cuts, the library is losing more subscriptions to journals and databases than it is gaining. According to the University Library Performance Dashboard, the university lost 1,690 serial subscriptions from 2000 to 2004. During that same span, the library gained only 104 book volumes.

John Elsweiler, associate director for public services, said the national trend is for more electronic versions of journals and databases and not for book volumes.

“It’s moving the other way,” he said. “The [electronic market] is exponentially going higher and higher. And it’s only been around for 10 years. Eventually, it will way exceed the demand for books.”

Last year, Bose asked the library to subscribe to IEEE X-Plore, a database of thousands of journals, conference proceeding and magazines, but the library did not have the money to do so.

“I understood,” Bose said. “All research universities have this. We were one of the few that didn’t so we had to get it somehow.”

Bose had to go elsewhere to fund the subscription and with the help of many other departments, he was able to come up with the $15,000 a year that was needed to gain access to the database.

“It was an embarrassment that we didn’t have the full version,” he said. “We only had the short version. I wasn’t going to give this one up because it was so important.”

The USU library has a budget of approximately $5.5 million a year. By way of comparison, the University of Utah spends about $22 million. Utah’s library ranks No. 33 in the country according to the Association of Research Libraries. USU is not in the top 100.

Utah also has 36,000 serial subscriptions and a staff of 264. USU only has 12,759 serials and 80 people on staff.

“It’s a pretty big gap,” Wolcott said.

Another reason the library is hurting financially is because the cost of journals is inflating at a rate of 10 percent a year, Wolcott said.

“It’s a market economy and [the journals] can get the money,” she said. “It’s not just USU. Every academic institution is going through this. It’s not going to change for a while unless the universities can show some muscle.”

Wolcott said universities are forced to subscribe to journals despite the cost of inflation because their professors need to have their work and research published.

Bose said the fact the library is so far behind its peer institutions is not the fault of its workers.

“It has an outstanding staff,” he said. “It’s managed very well. They’re just strapped for funding.”

Because the library does not have all the resources it needs, it takes part in an inter-library loan program with other universities across the country.

When someone needs a resource that USU does not have, the library will loan it from another university for a short time.

“The inter-library loan works well,” Bose said. “The staff does well to get material for us.”

USU has a significant trade deficit in this area. In 2004, the library loaned resources from other universities 18,253 times while lending material in only 13, 652 instances.

Bose said the new building is very nice and is important for students, but does not help the university in terms of research.

“I’d rather see more subscriptions than a new building,” he said. “But it’s good for the students to have a nice building.”

-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu