This commentary is by Ron Jacobs of Winooski, who retired in 2022 after virtually 40 years of library work, together with 25 years at school libraries — greater than 20 of them on the College of Vermont and St. Michael’s Faculty libraries. The remainder of his library profession was spent in public libraries.
Libraries and their staffs are an important half of a faculty training. Pretending in any other case shortchanges college students, college and employees. Certainly, it’s an insult to their roles within the pursuit of an training.
The proposal to shut the libraries on Vermont State College campuses exposes an unfathomable ignorance on the a part of the decision-makers concerned. Not solely does it make me marvel if these people perceive the function of a library at a college, it additionally makes me marvel in the event that they perceive that analysis requires greater than an web connection. I additionally can not help questioning if a few of them have learn something aside from their social media and inventory portfolio within the current previous.
All too usually, the parents making academic selections usually are not educators. Even when some are, their considering is just too caught up in a company mindset that can’t perceive something aside from instant returns.
This thought course of is extra akin to that of the bean counters within the company world whose main rationale for every little thing is cash. This has been ever extra true within the final 20 or 30 years. It has been very true as regards the establishments now generally known as the Vermont State College.
If one recollects just a few years in the past, bureaucrats, politicians and overpaid consultants had been clamoring to terminate all the state schools in Vermont. Thankfully, clamor from Vermonters, college, employees and college students prevented that calamity. The result’s Vermont State College.
In accordance with these calling to shut the libraries, one purpose is that the present use isn’t the identical because it was earlier than the Covid lockdown. This rationale isn’t legitimate. Little or no has returned to the way it was earlier than Covid. It’s too early to make everlasting selections with the prevailing knowledge.
How can one truthfully evaluate use statistics over the previous yr with the use statistics earlier than Covid modified every little thing? They can not, not in truth.
Moreover, because the libraries usually are not a profit-driven enterprise like some restaurant, this rationale shouldn’t even be utilized right here.
I encourage the scholars, college and employees of the Vermont State College system to oppose these cuts. I urge the residents of Vermont and their legislators to hitch them.
If the college administration feels it wants to save cash, I like to recommend they start by taking a tough have a look at the manager board and its services. In my many years of working at school and college libraries in Vermont and elsewhere, the presence of the library at all times meant much more to the scholars than the faculty administration and their workplace area.
