Library Field Trip: An Expedition to the Lafayette College Skillman Library Philip Holderith INFO 520: Social Context of Information Professions July 18, 2010
Philip Holderith 2 As I spoke to Bob Duncan, the Systems Librarian of Lafayette College, the idea that he most emphasized was one of relative security. If you need it, he said, we ll get it. Lafayette College has an enormous endowment, and despite the difficult economic times the Skillman Library continues to afford numerous resources for the faculty and students there. This librarian s primary concern, rather, was that of making the most of the resources that have been proven necessary, without purchasing excessive materials. To be prepared for all possible research projects is simply impossible. At the Skillman Library, the staff has developed a system that can respond to any need, should the current collection be deficient. The Skillman Library of Lafayette College 1 contains over half a million volumes, including selected foreign literature in its original language, enormous books of art, a wide selection of current periodicals and compilations of older issues, and an extended reference section just behind the circulation desk. Downstairs the books are arranged according to Dewey Decimal Classification, and upstairs they are arranged according to the Library of Congress Classification. The library underwent a major renovation in the winter of 2003-2004, including a lot of expansion and rebuilding some of the older sections. Bob Duncan has worked at the Skillman Library for the past fifteen years. He began as a Reference and Instruction Librarian, but eventually assumed the title of Systems Librarian. The staff of the Skillman Library is sufficient, but they do not have enough members to assign every job to an individual person. Many staff members do more than one job, because it is the library 1 Lafayette College is in Easton, Pennsylvania. I live in that same city, and in fact I live only a few blocks away from it. Nevertheless I have never worked there, and because neither I nor my family has any connections with the college, I cannot check out books from its library; instead I usually go to the Easton Public Library for resources. Therefore I am not especially familiar with the setup of the Skillman Library, although I have visited it in the past in the hope of finding materials that the public library (being smaller and not as well funded) did not have. My reason for using the Lafayette Library in this essay was purely that of traveling convenience, since I do not own a car, and my working part-time while being a full-time student makes any travel very difficult. And, no, I did not attend Lafayette College as an undergraduate, because I have always thought of Lafayette as a bit of a party school.
Philip Holderith 3 of a relatively small, private college. Mr. Duncan often spoke of a university library in comparison, stating that, in the latter case, every job involves so much work that a full comprehensive staff is required. Here, Mr. Duncan must do some collection development as well as systems work. All the staff members of Skillman Library must collaborate in collection development. The Skillman Library does not have a written collection development policy, because it has simply never seemed necessary. The staff members add to their collection the materials that are pertinent to the college s curricula. Books are purchased for the classes being offered every semester. Therefore it is the faculty who drive the collection development, not any concept of covering every area or appealing to personal taste. Because collection policies are more theoretical than practical [ ] they provide an intellectual guide to selection rather than a practical method of selecting materials (Lumande, 26). An academic library should provide a collection that suits the curriculum choices of the teachers, and no policy can predict that. A negative consequence of this conduct is that, if the faculty does not teach in a certain area, the library may have a significant gap in that area. When a new course requires new books, those books can be bought, but the library may still appear deficient or imperfect. This leads to the question of which purpose on which a college library should primarily focus providing materials for all, or aiding the private college in educating its students? This library is not a public one, and though admission is free, only Lafayette members may check out books or log onto its subscription databases. One must remember that this library is funded by students tuition, not by public taxes. Although the Skillman Library contains many excellent resources, its goal is to provide for the paying students who attend the college, not philanthropy or to promote literacy. Not that its purposes are purely academic. Mr. Duncan pointed out that
Philip Holderith 4 they collect some recreational readings, such as the Harry Potter books. If you need it, he said, or if you can justify its purchase, we will buy it. The staff members catalog the books in-house. Much of it is copy-cataloging, although they also do some original cataloging. They are looking into programs that provide them with shelf-ready books books that come with call numbers and barcodes but this has not been done at the Skillman Library yet. The Skillman Library belongs to a variety of consortiums. A consortium is a group of affiliated entities who can join together to buy the same product, and a vendor may give them a discount if many different colleges are buying the same services. In order to save money on popular library services, Skillman has joined the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI), in order to have increased cooperation with other libraries the area; the Oberlin Group, for the exchange of ideas and sharing of electronic resources with other select liberal arts colleges; consortia through OCLC, in order to access other collections and contribute their own; and the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges (LVAIC), which shares a delivery service for interlibrary loans. In addition to the reduced prices that a consortium offers in services and products, another benefit is the opportunity to make their resources available to the whole world. Students of Lafayette College are able to access a much wider variety of information, and at the same time the staff members of the library know that their materials are being put to more use. As stated before, the lines between different jobs at the Skillman Library are not concrete. In the Acquisitions Department, every staff member of the library performs some tasks. Technically, the department consists of three people: a director and two supporting staff members. Only one person (the director) submits the actual orders for new books or interlibrary
Philip Holderith 5 loans. However, everyone makes some decisions regarding the development of the library s collection. To give everyone an equal amount of work, they have divided the responsibility according to subject. Mr. Duncan usually determines what books on the topics of engineering and chemistry are acquired, and he collaborates with the faculty member or members who teach those areas. These two subjects are not his areas of expertise, but he chose them out of some personal interest, and that is perhaps the story with the majority of the staff members. This does not mean that only Mr. Duncan can make decisions about engineering and chemistry books. Anyone can request an order, regardless of subject, unless the budget is tight, in which case those in charge of certain subjects advise in the acquisition. The materials of the Skillman library do not exist in one uniform classification system. Around half are in the Dewey Decimal Classification, while the other half and every new book that arrives today are cataloged according to Library of Congress Classification. The library started with all of its books in the DDC, but in the 1980s, they began placing new books in LCC and converting some old books to that system. Mr. Duncan explained that the LCC is better for academic libraries. Many libraries have made similar conversions, for several reasons: LC was considered more flexible and expandable, and had shorter numbers than DDC, thus the claim that LC is better suited for academic libraries. Other reasons cited were the numerous revisions in the DDC schedules with each new edition and the local practices that were instituted to compensate for those changes. Without reclassification of the library's existing collection, the new material on the same subject would be scattered (Shorten, 124) The ultimate goal in the Skillman Library is to convert everything to LCC, and they have already converted most of the music and art books in the library. However, conversion of the entire collection (over a hundred thousand books) will need money, and time, as well as swing space and people to move the books. In the department of electronic resources, the Skillman Library is very well prepared. They subscribe to many databases such as JSTOR, LexisNexis, ERIC, Encyclopedia Britannica,
Philip Holderith 6 Oxford Reference tools, and countless others. In this area they are not stingy, but try to provide as many resources as possible. On the other hand, Skillman does not scan academic resources for classes. When faculty members need resources scanned they do so themselves, and often make the files available with the aid of Moodle, an open source Course Management System. In addition, the College Archive Collections contains self-made electronic collections, such as scans of Lafayette newspapers and image files created by the Digital Initiatives Librarians. The Skillman Library has not begun using electronic book collections yet, but the library staff may begin using them in the fall. In Mr. Duncan s opinion, the students of Lafayette College do not use the library s resources to their full potential. College students are more likely to use electronic resources instead of print resources. It is not that either of them works better than the other; rather, Mr. Duncan explained, the staff members believe in evaluating any source, and finding the most appropriate source for your project. The indexes in print resources can sometimes make a difference in research, and so the students who depend on electronic resources often miss opportunities to discover additional materials that an index could reveal. Most of the Skillman staff are members of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the ALA. In addition, most the archivists working there are involved in the Society of American Archivists. Mr. Duncan proclaimed that he was not a joiner. He participates in users groups for automation software, but he is not a member. Very little grant writing goes on at the Skillman Library. At Lafayette College it is primarily the faculty who apply for grants, in order to support their research. The library usually does not, because the institution usually can provide funding for materials. Mr. Duncan is not
Philip Holderith 7 aware of any significant grants being requested in his time at the Skillman Library, although the IT department does request some grants. Nonetheless, Mr. Duncan was willing to tell me a few items he wishes the library could obtain, if they had more funding. In general, he would like to be able to subscribe to more of the academic journals available, because inflation on the prices of these journals (particularly the science journals) has made the college less likely to purchase them. He would also be interested in some of the more expensive indexes, specifically Compendex. But mostly they are able to obtain the resources they need. They can purchase individual back files from the Web of Science, rather than buying complete access to all files, and Mr. Duncan is confident that the former method is actually cheaper. They subscribe to Science Direct, an online collection of published scientific research operated by the Elsevier publishing company, but they operate through a pay-per-view setup, which is proven to be more cost-effective. Mr. Duncan explained that they are always looking for ways to bring information to the college more efficiently and less expensively. He remarked that this outlook forces them to be more creative and find new approaches to their problems. At Skillman, the librarians are not so much interested in luxuries as they are in staples.
Philip Holderith 8 Bibliography Lumande, E., & Ojedokun, A. A. (2005). Collection mapping as an evaluation technique for determining curriculum and collection relationship: The University of Botswana experience. African Journal of Library, Archives & Information Science, 15(1), 25-33. Shorten, J., Sikel, M., & Ahrberg, J. H. (2005). Why do you still use Dewey?: Academic libraries that continue with Dewey Decimal Classification. Library Resources & Technical Services, 49(2), 123-136.