LOCH SHELDRAKE, NY — We’re deep into the digital revolution and that means libraries are changing.  Here’s the first paragraph from a Los Angeles Times article from April 2017: (tinyurl.com/lcm7n9y) “Libraries are 4,000 years old, but the digital revolution is dramatically changing their use on college campuses. From coast to coast, UC Berkeley to Harvard University, libraries are removing rows of steel shelving, stashing the books they held in other campus locations and discarding duplicates to make way for open study spaces. Their budgets are shifting away from print, to digital materials.”

That kind of change is now coming to SUNY Sullivan. President Jay Quaintance said the college needs a better space to help students through the process from initial contact to enrollment. So, he said,  “We’re going to create a one-stop center in the library, where the library is now; part of that going to be removing some of the stacks from the library and distributing them in micro collections throughout the rest of the building.”

So, for instance the Psychology department will have their own collection of relevant books.

But the college will be getting rid of some of the books. Qaintance said, “That’s mostly because out of the 52,000 volumes our library has, we only had 450 checkouts last year. So people aren’t using it, is basically what it comes down to.

“We recognized the need to have certain important texts on campus. And the other thing we’re going to do is create a system similar to the New York Public Library, where rather than being able to browse through open stacks, the user will talk to a librarian and request a certain test and they’ll get it for you.

“And we’ll continue to participate in inter-library loan and all kinds of on-line resources, and actually expand our online collection considerably.”

Asked if there was pushback against the decision, he said, “There are some people that are upset and some people that recognize that this is where library collections are moving in the future. You’re not going to make everybody happy, I guess, but we want to make sure that all of our constituent groups have access to library resources in a reasonable, timely fashion.  We’re not interested in any way limiting that type of access, we’re just trying to figure out the right way to do it.”