Wesleyan University will close the Art Library in Davison Art Center in 2014 and transfer the 25,000 titles currently there to the Olin Library, the Wesleyan Argus reported on April 5.
Some of the art collection is already housed in the Olin Library, since the Art Library reached capacity in the mid 1990s.
In addition to the lack of space and separation of the collection, Joseph Siry, Chair of Art and Art History Department, cited the current library’s lack of air conditioning, which can be harmful to the books.
However students and staff both expressed concerns that removing the books would make them less accessible to students working in the studio space and professors using them in classes. “It’s kind of like removing the lab from [the science] department,” said Art Librarian Susanne Javorski.
Students and staff also expressed concerns about losing the library as a community center for art students. The committee in charge of making a final recommendation to the administration hopes to create a similar space within the Olin library, but that depends on the main library’s weeding enough books and moving enough offices to create a contiguous space to house the art collection.
The administration has not yet chosen among the proposals submitted for repurposing the Art Library space.
About Meredith Schwartz
While the trend in scholarship, teaching, and academic libraries is toward “decentralization, distribution, adhocracy, complexity, informality, and collaboration” (Jim Neal, the Expert Library, vii), too many senior academic administrators and trustees still approach their funding difficulties without imagination, like coupon-clipping grandmothers willing to deploy only the most obvious and antiquated cost-saving strategies in order to provide for their own cover in difficult economic times. Wesleyan is known among its peers for having a stellar combined program in studio art and art history, and this is in part due to its having over the years cultivated an excellent art library. Nothing threatens the future of the small, quality liberal arts college more than this perceived need to preserve and grow ever larger endowments at the expense of program and quality. Decision-makers that cannot embrace organizational models that support new thinking and action are their institutions’ own worst enemies.