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Article Excerpt
Robert A. Seal put it best when he wrote, "Few issues in academic librarianship inspire as much controversy as the branch or departmental library. At the center of this controversy is the question of whether or not collections should be centralized in the main university library or located in part in separate branch libraries." (1) Although Seal wrote these words almost two decades ago, his words still hold true. Many articles have been written about the controversy, and the issue has been discussed with much passion and concern on the electronic discussion list of the Music Library Association (MLA-L), at library conferences, backroom meetings, and even over drinks among colleagues. This remains a concern today not only for the librarians in charge of those branch libraries, but also for the faculty and students they serve. As Olivia M. A. Madison, Sally A. Fry, and David Gregory stated in 1994, "the mere mention of a branch library review will bring faculty members out in full force--some to 'defend' their branch facilities, others in an obvious posture of 'attack.'" (2) Faculty and students generally cite loss of proximity, convenience, and prestige in their arguments against centralization of music services and collections. Music librarians are threatened by the loss of specialization of services, fearing that library administration will forget about the needs of music users if the collections and services are located in a larger main library.
In December 2003, Loyola University, New Orleans, closed its music branch library and moved music collections and services into the five-year-old J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library. This move was the culmination of a major collaboration of library faculty with music faculty and students that resulted in a design for housing and offering music collections and services that satisfies all of the major stakeholders. The move had the support of all of the librarians, including those librarians who were most closely involved with music collections and services, and no pressure was placed on the librarians by the library administration to accomplish the move. We shall describe the planning and negotiation process for Loyola's music library move and the success achieved in the new space. Further, we shall analyze our case in the context of the Association of College and Research Libraries' guidelines for branch libraries in colleges and universities. We hope to show that, although it requires patience and perseverance, working in a collaborative model with music students and faculty can bring about a final outcome that will be beneficial to both the library and its users.
BACKGROUND
Loyola University is a medium-size comprehensive Jesuit Catholic university. The urban campus sits on twenty-four acres in two locations in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. The undergraduate enrollment is approximately 3,800 and the total enrollment, including the School of Law, is about 5,900. The College of Music offers programs or degrees in jazz studies, music composition, music education, music industry studies, music in liberal arts, music theory, music therapy, music with elective studies, instrumental performance, vocal performance, piano pedagogy, and ballet. The College of Music enrollment in 2003-4 comprised 327 undergraduate and 26 graduate students.
The J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library, which opened its doors in January 1999, is 150,000 square feet and includes more than 700 study spaces. Its teaching and learning spaces include two multimedia classrooms, four seminar rooms, fourteen group study rooms, an instruction lab, the Multimedia Macintosh Lab, the newly created Information Literacy Living Room and Lab, and an art gallery. The library works closely with the departments of Information Technology and Visual Arts, the College of Music, and the Lindy Boggs National Center for Community Literacy. The library's collection offers 356,644 volumes, 27,037 e-books, 21,500 full-text e-journals, and 103 online information resources. The Monroe Library was the recipient of the 2003 Association of College and Research Libraries Excellence in Academic Libraries Award, which recognized the library's strengths in teaching, collaboration, and innovation. The library is a team-based organization and strives to be a model of what academic libraries are and will become. The library, as an organization, encourages creative thinking and actively seeks to serve as a test bed for new ways of delivering information and new methods of teaching and learning. As a result, the library seeks to provide the highest quality learning tools and information content to enhance the educational experience for faculty and students.
While the consolidation of the music collections and services into the Monroe Library took place in 2003, this was not the first time that Loyola University had considered centralization of its library services. When the Monroe Library building was being planned, a task force looking at critical issues facing the library identified the music library as an area for further examination. Other parts of the library (group study space, government documents, media services, special collections, and computer labs) were being integrated into the new building, and many in the library felt that the music library should move into the new building as well. At the time, though, the idea had no support. Music faculty could not visualize what music collections and services would look like in a building not yet built or fully conceived, and the issues that would eventually tip the scales in the decision for the College of Music (technology and space) were not yet pressing. The effort undertaken by the library at that time was not a collaborative one, and it failed before it could gain any momentum.
In 2003, the library saw an opening to revisit the possibility of moving music collections and services to the Monroe Library. The music library was becoming increasingly difficult to support, both financially and technologically, and it was quickly running out of space for growth. The music library covered 3,519 square feet and was staffed by one librarian and 1.5 FTE staff. Cataloging had long been centralized in the main library. In the academic year 2002-3, the music library was open 79 hours per week, while the Monroe Library was open 112 hours per week. Additionally, the Monroe Library had plans to add five open hours per week by opening at 7:00 a.m. on weekdays. The Monroe Library provided twenty-four-hour study during the final-exam period, which the music library was unable to offer. The music library was able to carve out space for only five computers, and because there was no computer lab in the building, these workstations had to suffice both for writing papers and providing access to library resources. Staff from the Department of Information Technology struggled with network and support issues with the music library computers. Furthermore, other instructional technology-based equipment could not be supported in the music library because of space and staffing issues.
EVALUATION
The criteria laid out in the 1990 ACRL guidelines for branch libraries in colleges and universities (3) can be a useful tool in evaluating the efficacy of a branch library. At the time the move of Loyola's music library was being considered, we were not aware of these guidelines and did not use them. In hindsight, however, they proved helpful in showing why the move was necessary. The guidelines include consideration of the following:
A. the information needs of the total academic community;
B. the primary clientele (students, faculty, academic departments) and their information [or other library] needs;
C. geographical location related to primary clientele and to the total community of users;
D. collection development and management policies (including the cost of duplicating resources on the campus);
E. the physical arrangement of the collections to meet the cross-disciplinary needs of the academic community;
F. user services including hours of access, appropriate technologies, and staffing requirements;
G. access to union catalogs, delivery systems, and specialized information systems;
H. space and equipment requirements;
I. operating costs and financial support requirements.
While not all of the guidelines point to problems, many of them help to show why library administration and faculty would have been concerned about the situation that was developing in Loyola's music library (see appendix A--a side-by-side comparison of the two libraries). Although the primary users of the music library were in close proximity, the relative obscurity of the music library's location on the second floor of the Communications/Music Complex meant that the music collections were virtually unknown to library users outside of music. The faculty in history and folklore who were interested in using the music library found the music facility inconvenient due to location, hours, and differences in borrowing periods. As Diane Parr Walker pointed out in 2003,...
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