Save the library

The Independent Collegian

Carlson Library — the beating heart of Main Campus. Without it, the students cannot survive. It is crucial to their time here: whether it means checking out a book for research, studying long and late in a study room, or getting together to study with friends. A library’s purpose is to serve the students, and ideally, it reflects on the university as a whole. And if the heart stops, the rest of the body will, too.
Right now, if UT’s library is a reflection of our university, then it shows that we’ve got a lot of work to do. With huge chunks of the second floor half torn up and closed off, and the third and fourth floors old and in need of renovation, our library needs more attention and funds than administration acknowledges.
To understand how big the problem is, we have to go back and look at the start. In September 2011, Benjamin Pryor, vice provost and dean of the College of Innovative Learning, said the renovations on the second floor were in response to the depressing state of the second floor in January. That was five years ago. Five years is longer than most students even spend at the university. At the time, renovations were planned to happen in three phases, which would be completed in Spring 2012.
However, after a cut from state funding, more than half of the second floor has remained neglected. Instead of having a new, modern library, with increased study space for collaboration, a patio, a bridge between the second floor and the Student Union, or new technology as planned according to Pryor in our 2011 article about the renovation, we’re stuck with an old-fashioned relic. We understand money is tight, but money has been tight for several years now, and the university has still managed to complete other projects. Even the renovations of the third and fourth floor, which are finally beginning to happen, push the second floor renovation back onto the back burner.
Without a doubt, this editorial is late. This is the editorial we should have written three years ago when we realized the library renovations were being dropped. The university let the renovation ideas slowly wither and die, and instead of rallying attention to that issue, we did the same thing. It took the first stage of the library renovations actually being announced for us to notice the problem. We understand this isn’t the fault of the library staff, or the people in charge of the library. The library has operated with severely limited funding for the past few years, and we wrote about cuts in several previous articles. This problem is that the university administration needs to make the decision to prioritize, fix and focus.
Right now, the library is often crowded and cluttered. Students often go to the third and fourth floors looking for individual study rooms and find them full. On the second floor, the tables are almost always crowded. Clearly, the library is a resource students care about and want to utilize. Student Government even had a petition to keep the library open longer so students could keep using it during exam week. For something so important to the students to be so underprioritized by administration is disappointing.
The university has to decide where to spend their money with great discretion. However, the library needs a full, complete renovation from the second to the fourth floor. Renovating the third and fourth floors is finally happening, and the decision to renovate it has our full support. However, the progress must not stop there. The library is a symbol of the students, and a symbol of what our university means. That symbol is worth spending our money on, not just because it represents us, but because it is practical. We have to fix this problem, and we can’t wait another three years to do it. We’ve waited long enough.