Towers
A Newsletter for Supporters of the University of Idaho Library
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Towers A Newsletter for Supporters of the University of Idaho Library
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Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.-Abigail Adams
The Library: A Tradition of Learning
Amidst the rows and rows of books, she sat, reading intently. The volume she so diligently studied seemed to engulf her as she dove into the ocean of insight held upon its pages. Unconsciously, her hand brushed a stray hair away from her face, but even this slight movement failed to break her concentration. She was in another world now – one that she had entered as she passed through the library entrance. Here, at least for a time, the physical world meant nothing.
Surrounded by these assembled facts and opinions, histories and fictions, biographies and natural histories, of the past and of today, she felt safe in her own world of study. This world she trusted to the fullest extent not only to maintain the serene atmosphere of shelved books, quiet whispers, and shuffled papers, but also to provide her with knowledge that would enrich her life – a further step toward the wisdom that she so resolutely sought.
Though this description overly dramatizes a modern student’s perception of the library, it might, even in today’s sometimes too cynical world, hold some truth. After reading this description, it is difficult not to ask - do academic libraries really possess that kind of value today?
In an attempt to gain a better understanding of current student attitudes toward the library’s impact on their study and research, a randomly selected, multi-disciplined group of one hundred students, both undergraduate and graduate, were informally interviewed this Fall. Using a list of loosely devised topics concerning the library, the students were interviewed on an individual basis, anonymously. When the summaries of these conversations were analyzed, it became clear that the library does serve student scholars as both a sanctuary and a source of information.
Clinging to some long-held “traditional” views of the library, the students overwhelmingly connected the library to academic excellence, scholarly achievement, and generally good study habits. However, the reasoning behind typical student views has evolved along with both changes in education and information technology. Students noticed that technology has dramatically changed the library’s services – providing many advantages in their research. In turn, this has greatly enhanced the library’s viability among students.
While some believe that the modern academic research library’s significance (as well as use) will gradually decrease with technological progression, others point to technology’s beneficial role among academic libraries. Richard Bazillion and Connie Braun, in their book, Academic Libraries as High-Tech Gateways (2001), point out that, “Users may well spend significantly more time in the library, because of the research potential available in the campus information network and because of easy access, through the same network, to Webpage-creation, text editing, and data-analysis software. All work associated with the research project – from generation of a bibliography to production of a finished paper – can be done in the library.” When questioned, students support this analysis. In fact, more than half of those surveyed noted the library’s excellence as a “study habitat” and/or research facility. Most notably, citing their frequent use of the library’s resources for their research, students mentioned the benefit of going directly from research, to writing, to production without leaving the building – using such services as the computer labs and the library copy center.
Closely associated with the library’s excellence as a “study habitat” and a research facility is its integration of such important technologies as wireless laptops, multi-media learning technology, and full-text articles through e-mail. Now more than ever, University of Idaho students feel that they have much greater access to the world outside of Moscow than did past students simply because these new technologies allow them to go beyond what the library has “in house.”
Commenting on this fast-paced world of change in learning today, one UI senior mentioned, “Even in the short period of time that I have attended this school, a little over three years, the way we can obtain information through the library has changed dramatically – for the better. One of the neatest innovations to happen at the library is that a lot of information can be sent directly to your e-mail over the Web – Wow!”
Also in relation to accessibility, students feel that user-friendly cataloging systems and software make this “connectivity,” both inside and outside the library, “a breeze.” And, the well-equipped library staff supplements the system through their ability to answer a range of questions concerning the catalog, acquisition of materials, etc.
While these new technologies have increased and enhanced the University of Idaho Library’s information capacity, students feel that the learning environment the library has created and maintained with its collections and facilities is also a major contributing factor to their overall appreciation of the library. With the library’s wide range of information, in both general and special collections, and facilities such as the group study rooms and twenty-four hour lounge, students truly feel that they can explore, research, and pursue any academic endeavor that might interest them, both individually and on a group level.
In comparison to these modern student views of the library, last Spring’s issue of Towers reprinted a humorous article originally written for the Gem of the Mountains in 1919 entitled, “The Library: A Student Perspective.” Within the article were many student views on the library – most of them being comedic views of early twentieth century campus life. However, among that whimsy was a solid truth, “…the library is a meeting place for the student body.” This remains true even today. And, even more important, students continue to view the library as a place to study, to pursue their academic endeavors – put simply, a place to learn. So it would seem that, even with eight decades of educational and technological change, the library’s tradition of learning has not been overlooked or ignored by the present University of Idaho student body.
From the Dean
Library use has been a hot topic in academe as traditional measures of library use have gradually declined over the last decade. Last month I was interviewed for a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Nov. 16, 2001), and the UI library’s statistics were featured in the story about how libraries were installing coffee bars and restaurants to stem the attendance decline. What the story left out was my observation that the decline in traditional measures was as a direct result of libraries spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to create fast, responsive, and convenient electronic services to allow students and faculty to use the library anytime, from anywhere. While door counts and in-house counts of traditional library materials are off by 20% and 33%, respectively, since 1997, electronic article use is up by 350% and database searches are up by 850% in just three years. Taken as an aggregate, library use is increasing.
How students use libraries are also changing. My generation thinks
of “going to the library” as engaging in solitary contemplation of printed
texts. Walking through the library this afternoon, I do see students
engaged in solitary reading and writing. I also see students actively
doing group work in our study rooms; clicking away at library terminals;
hunched over lab computers, both singly and in groups; making copies; reading
the newspapers; and consulting with library faculty on their current project
(due tomorrow, you can bet). Far from needing to be re-purposed as
a Starbucks, the library remains a center of active learning and study.
Since Teddy Came to Town...
The Love Letters of Ludwig Gerlough and Margaret Lauder
In October 2000, the University of Idaho Library acquired the Gerlough Family Papers (MG 403, UI Special Collections), a collection of letters written between UI Rhodes Scholar Ludwig Gerlough (1887-1978), and his fiancee Margaret Lauder (1883-1971), a Moscow High School teacher. Donated by the daughter of the Gerloughs, Ms. Eleanor G. Elmendorf (now deceased), the correspondence provides a window into the practices and rituals of courtship and marriage in the early twentieth century. From the fall of 1911, when Gerlough left for Oxford, until the day they married in October 1914, the couple exchanged fervent, passionate letters about their feelings for each other and about the political questions of their day. Because both writers saved the letters they received from the other—and because they eventually “married” their correspondence together when they set up a household—they provided readers with a deeper sense of precisely how their modern romance unfolded.
Early correspondence between Gerlough and Lauder reveals a blossoming friendship between the two while they were both teaching at Moscow High School. Then, in April 1911, an event occurred that deepened the couple’s romance. On April 9, former president Theodore Roosevelt visited Moscow, waving at the crowds lining the streets from an open car at the head of a motorcade. The president then climbed aboard a platform made of wheat sacks and delivered his speech, fists waving in the air, before thousands of cheering, rain-soaked onlookers. Then, “the rain ceased,” reported the Argonaut, “the sun almost shone and ‘Teddy’ grinned…the crowd yelled, every man after his own fashion, and at the top of his voice.” For the next sixty years, the couple marked the day that Teddy came to town as the beginning of their lifelong romance. "But you are the dearest wish of my life," Gerlough wrote her while he was away at Oxford in 1913, "…and my life in yours is a thing that has been a very real and joyous thing ever since Teddy came to town and shall continue to be so forever."
The long distance nature of the romance did place a strain on the two correspondents, however. By the spring of 1913, Gerlough had been away from Idaho and from Margaret for almost two years, and his heart grew restless. He began pressing Lauder to come and visit him at Oxford during her summer vacation. Lauder fretted over the titillating prospect of being alone with her fiancee. It would, she wrote Gerlough, not look good for a respectable woman to travel alone, or to travel with a man to whom she was not yet married (dating had come only so far!). Lauder finally wrote Gerlough on June 11 that she would sail on the S.S. Megantic with Mrs. Clearihue, the mother of another Rhodes scholar. The visit went so well that Lauder purchased material for her wedding gown in London.
As Gerlough noted in his correspondence, Rhodes scholars enjoyed certain privileges. Given his daily letter writing regimen, he may have appreciated his franking privileges most of all. He joined the Oxford Union, a clubhouse on campus where he socialized, studied, and wrote letters on Oxford Union letterhead stationary which he then folded into a similarly emblazoned envelope, sealed with a glob of red wax. The process cost him nothing, except the time it took to write the missives.
Meanwhile, Lauder struggled to maintain her meager living as a high school teacher. In 1912, the Moscow School Board refused her request for a raise for the next academic year. She accepted a position at Lewiston High School, but at the end of the 1912-1913 year, she again had to hunt for work. Palouse High School offered Lauder a contract for the 1913-1914 year, which she eagerly accepted. In May 1914, however, Lauder told the principal that her next contract would be her marriage contract with Ludwig Gerlough. No further explanation was necessary: until the 1940s, married women could not work as teachers.
If Margaret Lauder regretted her decision to leave her profession, her letters give no indication. After the couple’s October 1914 marriage they continued to correspond with family and friends, and their two children after they left home. The Gerlough Family Papers trace the mundane and the exceptional in the lives of the Gerlough family until the couple’s old age, but the real charm of the collection lies in the overseas correspondence between the two lovers. The weighty substance of Gerlough’s letterhead Oxford Union stationary, the thick imprinted red wax sealer, and the careful markings of the fountain pen makes the instantaneous and deleteable nature of corresponding via email today seem fleeting and inconsequential by comparison.
Information is the currency of democracy.-Thomas Jefferson
The Library, A Student Perspective
The Library of the University of Idaho is magnificent in the amount of knowledge stored on its shelves. It affords ample opportunity for the student body to steep itself in literary calm. In science and philosophy, together with household arts, one can spend hours in revelry. In addition, there are books and magazines of a lighter character for those of a trivial nature. Those include “Life” and similar publications which are chiefly to divert one’s mind after the ordeal of studies.
Books and bookworms are the essential figure-heads in the library. Certain couples who make the library their habitat, are fast becoming fixtures like the books, tables, and librarians. The process is tedious and usually the couple graduates before arriving at the dignity of figure-head-dom.
Aside from this, the library is a meeting place for the student body. One might say that it is the melting pot for the University. Here is a blending of knowledge with that gentle art called “mixing”. The mixing is of a silent character. Silence means consent. Dates are made in this fashion.
The faculty is not blind to the advantages the library affords, and several may be found there at any time during the day. Often they become so absorbed in their studies that the five-minute time limit is over-stayed.
The library offers unparalleled opportunity for the study of human nature. One has a fascinating and diverting avocation in attempting to discern the reasons for the presence of the studious ones. Among the girls, some come to display a new dress, a new sweater, or a novel manner of arranging the hair. Some come to knit, others to read popular magazines and to discuss the affairs and “cases” of themselves and others, while a minority come for serious work.
With the men the same condition obtains. Instead of a new dress, as in the case of the co-eds, it may be a “keen” tie, or a pair of socks. They copy each others’ math problems, and spend the remainder of the time reading the society and sporting news in the “Argonaut”. With the men, too, as in the case of the co-eds, there are some who come for a serious purpose.
The chief purpose of coming to the library is, however, a dual one, and is shared by both co-eds and men. We are now speaking of dates. We have already described how the dates are made, but the prevalence of this practice is greater than is commonly supposed, even by the Dean of Women. Words are rarely resorted to, for as soon as one speaks above a whisper, one feels the discomfort of having a chaperon present. One is confronted by the reproving eyes of the librarian, who reminds one of a mother-in-law. However, a smile, well directed, will eliminate this difficulty. Thus hours may be spent in silence - a silence that is camouflage.
Over all this, the librarian presides. She is omniscient - omnipresent. She can make or break a romance. She is the official Recorder and Judge of dates. As we have the comptroller of currency in a clearing house, so we have the librarian as comptroller of dates in the library.
From this it may be seen that the library plays an important role in student life. It has a broadening influence, mentally and socially; and though sometimes, under the crush of assigned reading we mistakenly inveigh against it, we will always look back upon it as a bright spot in our college days.
In describing the role of the library in campus life, the staff of the 1919 Gem of the Mountains, the University of Idaho’s yearbook, painted an interesting picture of the librarian. Not only did she reign over the books, she also had some clout in Cupid’s domain. While most today wouldn’t think of the librarian as a critical player in their budding romance, the watchful dragon, ready to breathe fire at anyone whose voice surpasses a lowly decibel level, is not so far removed from common misperception, despite exposure to friendly, helpful librarians.
This commentary emphasizes just how much the library and society in general have changed. This same yearbook reported that 39,000 books were housed in the University of Idaho Library. Eighty-two years later, the library has 609,951 books in the general collection. This number jumps to 980,000 when serials are added, and the tally reaches over 1,000,000 when all the library holdings are accounted for. The University of Idaho Library has grown tremendously over the past century, with the use of technology for data storage, transfer, and organization ever increasing.
Still a place for serious students, whether studying alone or in groups, the library is, indeed, a rich “melting pot” for the university, where students and faculty from many disciplines cross paths. Its highly trafficked location in the heart of campus continues to be prime for people watching, as well. However, with less stringent social etiquette, most men and “co-eds” are less apt to consider the library a hot spot for getting a date these days.
From the Dean
Spring 2001 Issue
Elsewhere in Towers, Kerry Brent writes about librarians' attempts to impose order on the World Wide Web. Another traditional library concern, preservation of those Web files, is less well advanced. It's ironic that presently librarians are being taken to task by Nicholson Baker in his book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, where he criticizes librarians for discarding original newspapers and books after they've been microfilmed.
At the same time, thousands of original documents posted to the World Wide Web disappear without a trace every day as sites change ownership or the authors move on. In a study done of undergraduate term papers at Cornell University, library researchers found that of the URLs cited as references, 50% were untraceable after only six months, and 80% had disappeared after four years. A similar process is taking place even in the full-text databases to which we subscribe, as publishers cut exclusive deals with one database vendor and pull their content from others. Even electronic versions of journals, which are extremely popular (and expensive), could disappear instantly if they cease to be a profit center for their commercial publishers. Since libraries license only access rights, they have no legal right to copy and preserve the electronic originals, even if it were economically feasible to do so.
Working through the Library of Congress and national consortia, such
as OCLC, libraries are trying to negotiate contracts with electronic publishers
to ensure that at least the basic building blocks of traditional scholarship
will be preserved for future generations by placing electronic copies with
a “vendor of last resort.” As for the rest, except for momentary electronic
"snapshots,” most of the non-commercial Internet is fated to disappear
forever into clouds of recycled electrons. If Nicholson Baker lives long
enough, he can write a book blaming librarians for that as well.
Mapping the Unknown: Information on the Web
Spring 2001 Issue
“It substitutes accumulation for hierarchy, addition for composition. More and more, more is more.” So stated architect Rem Koolhaus in the June 2000 issue of Wired Magazine. Koolhaus was describing the situation of information on the Web, and “it” refers to what he calls “junkspace,” that unfulfilling plethora of information that makes up the bulk of the World Wide Web. This is not to say that good information doesn’t exist on the Web, only that it lacks structure and organization, and sometimes that deficiency is compounded by the addition of even more extraneous information. Like a display tray of fancy desserts at a restaurant, the Web looks tempting from the outside, but the actual experience can be a little uncertain, since it’s hard to know how long the information has been sitting there, who the “chef” is, or even where the ingredients came from.
That is not, of course, going to stop us from trying the dessert. The promise of so much information at our fingertips is as difficult to resist as a double fudge brownie sundae with all the toppings. However, the Web is a tool that society hasn’t mastered yet. Although its use is rapidly increasing, many of the people who rely on it don’t really understand its strengths and limitations. One might say that the World Wide Web, as a tool, is still in that “new-fangled contraption” stage, a youthful phase in the adoption of new inventions throughout history when most people haven’t quite figured out how to use it or what it’s really good for. Near the turn of the last century, the automobile went through the same phase, waiting for its identity and place in society to be determined. Very few driving their first “horseless carriage” could have imagined the way cars are widely used today. Like the automobile, the Web is bound to evolve from its youthful, cumbersome form and identity to a streamlined, efficient vehicle whose purpose is clear. We simply aren’t there yet.
In the meantime, how do we deal with this unwieldy, yet obviously useful, tool? Some solutions only seem to compound the problem, such as search engines that list page after page of Web sites that might only contain two or three sites of actual use. The growing number of organizations and companies tackling the problem of organizing or categorizing the Web shows how important the Web is becoming in what has been called the Information Age. One company arbitrarily applies systems of information, including the Web, to geographic maps, such as the continent of Antarctica. By doing so, they hope to utilize the way people “map” the world around them in their minds to create an environment of information to be traversed. They’ve also gone so far as to model and display three-dimensional visual environments that can be navigated with the mouse.
Spatial representation is one of many forms of knowledge representation that helps users form a mental picture or map of what they learn. Another used frequently in relation to the Web, drawing from another discipline, is metaphor. Common metaphors include “highway,” “surfing,” and “space.” Each metaphor conjures certain properties of the Internet, such as a road where information can be found in the course of a journey, a vast ocean of information the user glides through, or a new frontier of information to be traveled by the mouse and mind. These metaphors relate properties of the newer medium to experiences that users are familiar with. Although there are many striking differences between the experiences of traveling on a highway and navigating the Internet, the idea of “sights” along the highway and “sites” on a trip along the information highway may give the user a manageable structure to model Internet navigation. Yet, we must remember that characterizing the early automobile as a “horseless carriage” failed to prepare us for the societal force that resulted; the analogy captured only part of the evolving concept.
Similarly, the metaphors and analogies used to describe the Web inadequately prepare us to use and understand this tool. It is the underlying content and organization that we really seek from the Web, whether we know how to use it or not. This is where libraries and librarians have a lot to offer the technological world. Who better understands how large amounts of information can be evaluated, categorized, and organized so people can find what they’re looking for? In a library, whether academic, public, or private, there are many ways to arrange materials into a system that allows you to find what you are looking for. Over the years, public and private libraries have experimented with the many choices available: alphabetical ordering by title or author’s last name, by size or color, by hardbacks and paperbacks, by read and unread books, by publisher, or by date acquired or date published. Meanwhile, most academic libraries group items by subject. Obviously, there are many things to think about when organizing a library.
Gradually, these same tried and true systems are being applied to the organization of information on the Web. Some sites have begun to group Web pages under the headings of the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal systems. The University of Idaho Library adds Web sites to the book catalog by giving them call numbers and subject headings. Such subject grouping is only effective when standardized terms are used in a disciplined fashion.
Even these attempts, however, can only organize tiny portions of the Web today. This may be sufficient; the validity of some, if not most, Web information is questionable. Perhaps pockets of credible information content are enough. This may be far less satisfying than the projected image of the globalized community we all hear about, though. With increased use, the Web may undergo what some call “computer Darwinism,” the survival of the fittest systems and programs. As more people use the Web, the demand for more usable systems should increase, so the supply of effective services to fill those needs also grows. The services that best fill the needs survive and become the basis for the next generation of programs: a simple evolutionary process that occurs far faster than biological evolution.
This evolution is going to make the Web a much more usable tool, but there will be plenty of growing pains encountered along the way. Increased Web use will create the demand needed to generate more fulfilling Web experiences, and the knowledge needed to make this happen will come from many sources, including the library. Information organization, representation, and retrieval are of interest to everyone, from the neuroscientist studying how our brains perform these functions, to the library cataloger placing books in the library, to the computer programmer designing a user-centered interface. All work to organize information with increasing efficiency, while improving the ease with which it can be accessed. While it is doubtful that “junkspace” will ever be exorcised from the Web (after all, it’s been around in print for years), it should become easier to avoid if desired (much like avoiding the less savory confections on the dessert tray). And future users will find, as they do today, that the library will provide the Cordon Bleu of information cuisine.
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