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Commentary: An unaffordable luxury

William Thompson
William Thompson
/
courtesy photo
William Thompson

I am disinheriting the WIU library. Until recently, upon my keeling over, my will directed a $100,000 bequest to the library to purchase books related to English, Latin, and Greek literature, which would benefit the library, the English Department, and the humanities.

However, as the administration decided to fire every librarian, I realized there would be no one at the library whose expertise could be trusted to meet my posthumous demands. Even after I’ve been burnt to ashes, throwing away money like that is an unaffordable luxury.

Also, I do not favor supporting a library that doesn’t help students, faculty, and the community--which is the library WIU is creating. The tenure track librarians at WIU all have masters in library and information science. They also have an additional masters or doctorate in a subject specialty, like sociology, education, theology, or, in my case, when I was employed there, English literature. A few are multilingual. Others are highly literate in database and web design. You get the picture. The librarians are a highly educated bunch, trained to help students with their usual information needs, for example, “Where do I find information on immigration from Norway to America?” And to help people with more specialized needs, “I need help locating the correspondence of Richard Harding Davis.”

Librarians lower library opportunity costs for students, which is the time and energy needed to get the appropriate information people need. When opportunity costs are low, then things are easy. For instance, it is easy to drive across Macomb because the roads are paved, and there are traffic laws to make driving safe. The opportunity costs for driving are low—likewise, librarians and the library. Librarians make the library easy to use.

There is nothing intuitive about using a library. People have to learn to use them. This is especially true of university libraries, which are large and complex institutions that contain information in every possible format. Even when students know some basics, like how to read the shelf classification codes, they quickly run into trouble when they want specific kinds of information--like the information about Norwegian emigration to America. For years, researching migration to America by students’ ancestors was a regular assignment for students. It helped them better understand their heritage, and they needed to find various narrative and statistical information to do the assignment. The library had, and has, many resources to help students do this assignment. Librarians spent money over the years to get reference works focused on migration. Librarians also learned--for librarians also have to learn--where to find various kinds of statistical information about migration lodged in databases, government resources, and the main collection. Librarians made online guides to the information and taught students how to get immigration information both in the classroom and at the reference desk. With librarians, the opportunity costs for students were regulated: low enough that students could do the assignment and high enough that they would need to think independently. Without librarians, student opportunity costs become so high that the assignment becomes unworkable. For instance, even if a student could locate particular immigration information in the catalog, would they realize whether it’s located in the Reference Stacks as opposed to the main collection? Doubtful.

Without librarians, a library becomes rather indifferent to students' information needs, etc. Such a library in effect, says, “I have the information you need, but I won’t tell you where it is.”

A librarian-less library will not help retain first-generation students--who, after all, are paying tuition in the hopes of getting an education and probably expect the university to provide services like faculty and usable libraries to help them do this. First-generation students are difficult to retain in the best of times--and these are not the best of times at Western. Why make it more difficult for them to stay in school? I am not interested in giving money to a library that is difficult or impossible for students to use effectively. What about databases? Aren’t they easy to use? Not, really. We have databases, but a person needs to understand Boolean logic and each database's controlled vocabulary to use them effectively. Without librarians to help students and faculty, database searching can quickly become frustrating. Without librarians to manage the databases behind the scenes, they will sooner or later crash.

Why would I support a library that makes things worse for students? I won’t. Nor should you. When a university fires every librarian and claims in the media that librarians are an unaffordable luxury, it ignorantly says that librarians are useless and that the institution could always have done without them--for we were always a luxury. I know the work my colleagues and I did was not useless. Helping students and faculty learn is not a futile activity. Sending students into a university library without any expert help waiting for them may be a futile activity. That is certainly what will happen on May 15, 2025. For these reasons, I am disinheriting the university library. I encourage others to do the same. You don’t have to abandon WIU. You can move your bequest to another part of the university as I am. The library’s loss will be another department’s gain--though, everyone will lose when all the librarians are gone.

William Thompson is a retired WIU librarian.

The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Western Illinois University or TSPR.

Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.