Report: Yale Students, Officials Clash Over Future Of On-Campus Library

From WNPR:

Students at Yale University are protesting a plan to permanently remove some books from a campus library in favor of more study space.

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“Students want to work with shelves surrounding them with books on them,” said Leland Stange, a Yale University senior who’s majoring in humanities and philosophy. “They want to see the heft of books and have to be forced to sort of confront these physical objects and work in those spaces. That’s what encourages you to do work is being in a library – not being in a lounge.”

By the fall, the school will remove about 58 percent of the volumes currently located in the Bass Library in favor of more study space.

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The university’s librarian believes the controversy surrounding the renovation is overblown.

Susan Gibbons attributed the passionate response from students to a conflation of two things: the task of keeping a student body that turns over year-to-year apprised of what’s happening, and concern over the project’s original timeline – one that would have seen a Bass closure for the fall 2019 semester.

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Background

Yale Announces Renovation Plans for Bass Library (August 2018)

UPDATE (2/15):  Yale University’s Planned Renovation of Bass Library Draws Ire from Students (via Fine Books and Collections)

Filed under: Libraries, News