A few quiet havens for the studious will be lost this school year as the UI closes the doors to four branch libraries.
In an effort to cut roughly $1 million from the library budget and adapt to changing technologies, the Mathematics, Psychology, Geoscience, and Physics Libraries will leave their current facilities to merge with other, larger libraries on campus.
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The four closings will eliminate 19 student jobs in the library branches, contributing to the efforts to save between $80,000 to $100,000 by cutting library positions, said Kristi Robinson-Bontrager, the public-relations coordinator for the UI Libraries. This year, stimulus money covered $500,000 of the $1 million in cuts that the UI Libraries faces.
Although budgetary needs provided an incentive for closing the branches this year, Robinson-Bontrager said technology has altered the necessity of holding specialized libraries. The field of physics, for example, is more concerned with producing electronic material than publishing traditional print journals.
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Robinson-Bontrager said the four libraries were chosen because they have the smallest “gate count,” which refers to how many people come through the doors. While the Main Library had more than 1 million visitors in fiscal 2009, the four libraries combined had around 97,000 visits.
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Officials emphasized the libraries are merging, not closing. The frequently used materials will be available to students but in different locations.
“It’s not like we are closing them and throwing away the books,” Robinson-Bontrager said.
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