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Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

Reposting from Information Observatory: “Academic libraries in class society”

Over at Information Observatory, Shinjoung Yeo and Dan Schiller just co-wrote a thoughtful piece called “Academic libraries in class society.” Since I consulted a bit on the piece, they graciously agreed that I could re-post it here on FGI. Please have a read and let us know in the comments what you think.

A shocking disparity defines the US system of information provision.  At one extreme is the multi-trillion-dollar corporate wealth of the for-profit information industry. At the other end is the growing – and deliberately inflicted – poverty of our public information sector.  During the past half-century, capital and class together have gravely worsened this disparity.

Scholars have analyzed the depredations visited by the for-profit information industry on the information sphere in general, and libraries in particular. Corporations have enclosed and raided governmental and other public information sites, while doing everything in their power to vilify the belief that information is, and should be, a social good.[1] A recent appellate court decision to ban the Internet Archive from lending out digital copies of half a million books to the public is only the latest troubling example.[2]

Concomitantly, libraries have faced declining budgets which have forced them to significantly hollow out collection development and other public services and relinquish their traditional functions to for-profit database providers and publishers – at the same time expanding and highlighting rare and precious special archival collections to prospective donors and possible political allies as if this is the sole function of libraries.

However, a closely related second factor has also been at work: a class logic. According to Mary Jane Petrowski, associate director at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL),[3] between 2012 and 2021, 31% of full-time librarian positions, 54% of all other paid full-time staff, have been lost in community colleges. At colleges that offer Baccalaureate and Masters degrees, 34.2% of full-time librarian positions, 55.4% of all other full-time staff have disappeared. For universities that grant PhD degrees, by contrast, the number of full-time librarians has actually increased by 13.7% (while all other full-time staff has dropped 21.7%).

Community college libraries serving mostly working-class students, in other words, have been gutted. Eliminating more than 30% of librarian positions and 50% of staff over a decade means that these libraries find it difficult to remain open.[4] And within colleges that offer Baccalaureate and Masters degrees, there is a comparable disparity. For instance, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), has only 9 full-time librarians including cataloging and special collections librarians serving about 16,500 overwhelmingly working-class students[5] – among them 48% are first-generation college students.[6] Since 2019, the library has lost 10 full-time librarian positions to retirement and departure. These positions remain unfilled. Thus, the library is struggling to provide adequate public services like reference and instruction, and is only able to cover the bare minimum of collection development for many subject areas – 30 out of the 58 subjects defined by the library as needed to support dozens of majors, minors, and programs have no subject specialist assigned.[7]

These conditions echo across the country. California State University (CSU), Bakersfield, a 4-year institution with a little over 9000 students – over 50% of them first-generation college students[8]  and many hailing from the lower fifth of the income distribution[9] — is served by 10 librarians and a total of 29 library staff.[10]  So much for the informational needs and aspirations of first-generation and working-class college students.

The situation at elite private colleges and universities could hardly be more different. Dartmouth College (NH), with an endowment of $7.9 billion,[11] is attended by approximately 6000 students – and sports no fewer than 134 staff including 23 subject specialists.[12] With about 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students[13]and an endowment of $50.7 billion,[14] Harvard has a system of 28 libraries operated by 700 librarians and staff.[15]   

It’s not subtle: the starvation of academic libraries that serve working-class students is counterposed to relatively generous support for institutions that cater to the children of the rich – and that sustain high-tech research.

In a radical democratic vision – one that has existed for centuries – the library helps to ground an emancipatory future as an active place for democratic living and learning, where everyday people have equal access to knowledge, and can dream of a different world by equipping themselves with it. To pursue this vision of the library, we need a great array of library workers who acquire, curate, catalog, maintain and preserve, provide instruction about, and circulate knowledge to and for all.

There are enough resources to reverse the current crisis of the library, but this will necessitate reorienting the US government’s priorities away from military spending and corporate subsidies toward social needs. It will also require economic redistribution. The obscene levels of wealth that disfigure today’s society[16] will need to be reduced, via adequate taxation – in order that the bottom half may be elevated, and granted resources sufficient for adequate housing, food, medical care, education, and libraries and public information. An urgent priority within this encompassing program is, once more, the need to democratize our system of information provision.


Special Thanks to James Jacobs from Free Government Information for his insightful comments and feedback.  

[1] Anita R. Schiller and Herbert I. Schiller, “Who Can Own What America Knows?” The Nation, April 17, 1982,  461-63; Herbert I. Schiller and Anita R. Schiller, “Libraries, Public Access to Information, and Commerce,” in Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko, Eds., The Political Economy of Information (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988),146-166; Herbert I. Schiller, Who Knows: Information in the Age of the Fortune 500 (Norwood: Ablex, 1982), 47-77.

[2] David Moscrop, “Copyright Keepers Just Destroyed a Huge Digital Library,” Jacobin,  September  20, 2024.

[3] Joshua Kim, “3 Questions on Academic Library Staffing for ACRL’s Mary Jane Petrowski,” Inside Higer Education, February 21, 2023.

[4] These changes are significant even if we take into account there are fewer post-secondary schools compared to 9 years ago, and overall enrollments are down. Worse, hiring temporary part-time and contract workers to manage extremely understaffed libraries is a normalized practice, reflecting the casualization of academic labor across the board.

[5] Queens College at a Glance (2023).

[6] Self-Study Design, Queens College.

[7] Queens College Library Subject Specialists.

[8] California State University, Bakersfield (2024).

[9] David LeonHardt, “America’s Great Working-Class Colleges,New York Times, January 18, 2017.

[10] Walter W. Stiern Library Directory, California State University (CSU) Bakersfield.

[11] Dartmouth Endowment Report 2023.

[12] Dartmouth University Staff Directory.

[13] About Harvard.

[14] Harvard Fact Book: Endowment.

[15] Harvard University Libraries.

[16] Jake Johnson, “’Global Oligarchy’ Reigns as Top 1% Controls More Wealth Than Bottom 95% of Humanity,” September 23, 2024; Oxfam Media Briefing, “Multilateralism in an Era of Global Oligarchy,” September 23, 2024.

Farewell, Evergreen Repository

Any student worth their salt at the Evergreen State College knows that it is a government documents repository. This is not just because of the orientation campus tour or the repository student employment postings, but because the head of the gov docs collection is an active, vocal advocate. If you happened to approach the reference desk while Carlos Diaz was on duty, it was likely he had a government publication to recommend to you, whatever the topic of your question may be. As I’ve begun to delve into the world of government information, I quickly discovered he is just as active with the larger gov docs community as he is at Evergreen. Carlos was a guest blogger here in November, 2007 (http://freegovinfo.info/library/diaz_bio) When my professor told me they were no longer a repository my first thought was, “What will happen to Carlos?!”

Carlos got into library work almost by accident. While completing his American History dregree at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Carlos took a work study job in the library. Upon completion of his degree, he was recruited for a position as a library assistant. It was while working the reference desk there that he began to learn about the government documents, as LSU is a repository. From there, he went on to the University of Mississippi’s government documents collection and finally Evergreen, where he took the position of head of collection.

Throughout his time at Evergreen, Carlos Diaz and his staff have created many “Hot Topic” pages to meet the needs of patrons. When he noticed students bringing their children to the library while they tried to study, he created a Coloring Books webpage as so many federal agencies offer great resources for kids. To fulfill the needs of the English as a Second Language Program, he created the Symbols of the United States page. As there is a large spirit of activism on the Evergreen campus and in Olympia in general, Carlos gets many questions on how to address government officials, for these inquiries he created a page dedicated to the Forms of Address and Salutations to Federal and State Officials. Carlos himself digitized the 1909 Checklist, he wrote me that it was a labor of love and a worthwhile effort. My personal favorites would have to be Geoducks! and Hot Dam! Dams of the Pacific Northwest.

So, why is Evergreen giving up repository status, with such a dedicated captain at the helm? Ultimately, it was up to the librarians. The decision was made, like so many in our field are, as a cost cutting measure. And really, isn’t everything online anyway? Carlos, a huge Star Trek fan, is the first to agree that eventually all government information will be digital, “There are some advantages and disadvantages to that. Of course, one of the advantages is the accessibility of government information, but the drawback is finding this information. A lot of it is buried deep down and only someone with knowledge of government structure might be able to find it.” For now, we are in what he calls the adolescence of the information superhighway. As for the physical collection at Evergreen, some materials will remain in the Daniel J. Evans Library. Much of the extensive map collection will be retained, as well as those items requested by faculty. Carlos is now dedicated to the challenge of deaccessioning the collection. Though he no longer works the reference desk, Carlos says, “I will continue to help people with their government information needs now more than ever.”

Many thanks to Carlos Diaz, an inspiration to me from early in my library career. Thanks also to my investigative reporters on the scene, Holly Maxim and Ian Ruotsala.

– Sara Medlicott

Government Information in Guatemala

First I’d like to express my gratitude to James Jacobs and Debbie Rabina for providing us with this opportunity. I’m looking forward to guest blogging this month.

This past summer, I lived and worked at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City, Guatemala. I didn’t work closely with government info sources during my time there, so for this post, I spent some time with the presidential website looking at the availability of digital publications and what kinds of e-gov tools are on offer. I also checked in with coordinator of access to collections, circulation and technical processes at Biblioteca Ludwig Von Mises, Regina De La Vega, to get her perspective on government resources in Guatemala.

The presidential site of Guatemala, The Government of Alvaro Colom, serves, in some ways as a publicity site for the first family. There is a slide show of news items relevant to presidential goals, photo albums of the first lady and presidential activities, videos describing various initiatives and biographies of the president and first lady. While top navigation features a tab entitled “press room” in some ways, the whole site feels like a press site. Almost at the very bottom of the page are links to presidential programs many of which are entirely accessible online and provide useful tools and services for Guatemalans. Sites such as “Governing with the People” (a compilation of governmental decisions from all departments and states) and the Public Information Office (a mix of everything from contact information to leases to audits) provide a high level of access to government information.

So how do actual librarians make use of these tools and resources? I was fascinated to hear my opinions about the publicity elements of the site echoed in Mrs. De La Vegas assessment “In Guatemala I think (a very personal opinion) the government publications are more oriented to advertise the work of the current government” She finds the most useful items to be those published by the ministry of education. They produce materials primarily in print but some are available online and are indispensable for distance education particularly in rural areas of the country. Mrs. De La Vega tells me that, at the reference desk students do not often request information the government releases and that typically they approach the institutions that publish them directly. Biblioteca Ludwig Von Mises does collect and catalogue some governmental publications, however. Mrs. De La Vega said the most commonly requested governmental materials are various statistical resources, as Economics is a huge department at UFM.

So, however free the government information may be, perhaps the real trick for librarians is getting students to actually use them!

Thanks for reading, and keep an eye out for a post from one of my classmates on Thursday.

Sara Medlicott

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