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March 31, 2009
Biology Library closure meeting/input
There will be an open meeting this Friday, April 3, at 8:00-9:00AM in the
Grainger Engineering Library Commons (room 235), to discuss changes in the
science libraries, which includes closing the Biology Library. Despite the
late notice and early hour, I encourage you to attend and/or send your
comments to Scott Walter, swalter@illinois.edu, or Paula Kaufman,
ptk@illinois.edu. Please copy me as well, if you send in comments.
As you may remember, back in January the University Library was asked by
Provost Katehi to accelerate its movement towards departmental library
consolidations as part of the “New Services Models” program. In late
January I sent out a message to the department chairs and school heads
informing them of the proposal included in the Provost’s letter to close
the Biology Library and merge its collections and services into the Funk
ACES Library. After lengthy discussions between the librarians who serve
other life sciences libraries we agreed that if the Biology Library was to
be closed, then consolidating it with the Funk ACES library and creating a
life sciences library containing all or parts of the collections and
services pertaining to the Applied Health Sciences, ACES, and Biology
libraries, as well as Veterinary Medicine at a later date, was the best
solution. Under this model, the Biology Library collection would need to
shrink to no more than half its current size. As you will see in the
attached proposal from the University Library administration, this
proposal was not accepted. Instead, they propose that the Biology Library
materials and services would be split between the Chemistry Library, the
Funk ACES Library, and perhaps the Library of the Health Sciences.
I do not support the proposal to split the Biology Library collections and
services. There is no bright line between the collections and services
used by the two schools, but in this proposed split it would roughly be
MCB going to the Chemistry and Health Sciences libraries and IB going to
the ACES library. The Chemistry Library has room for only about 6,000
volumes, which amounts to half of the Biology Library books that have
circulated recently and only a very few journal volumes.
As a separate but related issue, Melody Allison, the Assistant Biology
Librarian, will be moving this summer to the ACES library as Assistant
ACES Librarian due to staffing cuts at the ACES Library. This will leave
only one librarian serving SIB and SMCB.
A final report will be sent to the Provost at the end of April. I
encourage you to provide your input on the proposed library mergers and
consolidations before then.
Diane Schmidt
Biology Librarian
Posted by mmalliso at March 31, 2009 1:15 PM