Justin Kostopulos is not a traditional art history student at UNH. He’s 35 and a commuter, so he spends a lot of his time between classes wandering the stacks of the library. When he found out the Dimond Library was reviewing nearly 300,000 print titles for potential removal, he started a petition to ask the university to reconsider. Within a week, it gathered over 600 signatures.
“Removing these texts, I think, erases decades of accrued wisdom and insight,” he said. “It deprives students the unique experience of just handling a physical book, which many times can spark curiosity and critical thinking in ways that digital media often cannot.”
The book review is part of an effort by UNH to modernize its library, which was last renovated in 1996. UNH said in internal communications to staff and students that was shared with NHPR that the school was a decade overdue in going through their collections. UNH is also planning to open a new student center in the library’s unused space in a few years.
UNH said their library is prioritizing digital collections to serve online students, but Kostopulos said there’s still a lot of value to keeping physical copies.
“After speaking with many of my peers since starting this petition,” he said. “Many students, myself included, retain information better through physical books rather than reading something online.”
The university gave faculty six weeks to review the list of potential titles, ending on Oct. 21. But some faculty, including UNH History Professor Eliga Gould, said that wasn’t enough time.
As a historian, Gould also said that interests and access to technology often change, and it’s valuable to keep books, especially older ones.
“There is also no guarantee that books now available in online databases always will be there,” he said. “Some of the books slated for removal are over 100 years old. Will a pdf still be here in another 100 years? Today's best practice is all too often tomorrow's regret.”
He also recalled what some faculty members jokingly called “dumpstergate,” when thousands of books from the Dimond Library were found in a dumpster in 2014.
Even though the online collections may be more convenient, Gould said there is value to keeping print books, especially in a public university, since online books are not accessible to a general public that doesn’t have login to large online collections like HathiTrust.
“It's hugely important to have those print books available,” he said. “We're a public institution. This is open to the general public and that's a huge part of our mission as a land grant university.”
The university is still planning on moving forward with the renovation, but released a FAQ internally to address concerns. The FAQ said the books were selected for review because they hadn’t been checked out in over a decade, and are easily found in another library, or online.
“We default to purchasing electronic books rather than print books. We don’t have the budget to purchase more than one copy of a book, so the collection growth is all electronic and has been for the last ten years, since we adopted an e-preferred policy,” the FAQ said. “The print books we own are an increasingly aging and increasingly smaller percentage of our overall collection.”
The university is currently reviewing the feedback from faculty, according to the FAQ shared with staff and students.
