Shelf hatred

Paul Worthington

A better state of affairs would be universities run by academics, schools by teachers, factories by engineers, hospitals by doctors and nurses, etc. If managers are required, they should be on a lower level, charged with implementing instructions given to them by the real experts in the field. Having members of the pseudo-priestly caste of those annointed with managerialist pretensions by business schoolery is unbearable. We need to put things the right way up.

ARAWN CHARTERS

I really enjoyed this piece. Bristol University library has gone the same way. I hated the chatty idiots who treated the place like a social club.

I do, however, disagree with your assessment of digitised journals. Most journals available online have been scanned using Optical Character Recognition software. This makes it far, far easier to track down relevant articles and to isolate the relevant passages within those articles. One can't use 'CTRL+F' to keyword-search a book!

Nigel Atkinson

I am afraid that Peter Jones shows absolutely no understanding of modern libraries and represents yet another misinformed mouthpiece decrying the end of 'lovely libraries' full of unused books in favour of a useful fully used resource. Wake up man, square the fact that up to 60% of the books are not used and cost around £3 a year to keep them on the shelves then surely students have more to moan about if the library is buying print books than faculty have when they don't actually use the resource as much as they moan about it.
Unfortunately the tone and ridiculous sniping of this piece undermine what is a serious argument about the loss of research monographs. The petty-minded little Englander once again diverts the argument from serious discourse to the parlour dining table where it gets lost in port-fuelled vitriol.

D Short

What a great spoof 'Nigel Atkinson'!

Nigel Atkinson

Spoof maybe your take on it but it is serious business to many of us. The negative impact of comments from a romantic age of monied academics who lust after their past (wandering amongst the shelves of leather bound volumes in their UL) is not to be underestimated. These are tough times and every pound counts. If academics, students or researchers actually used the books on the shelves Peter is so worried about then there is a point to be made. As they do not actually use these cherished books or even visit the stacks in which they reside then why rant about something that makes no economic or common sense. To want for something that is gone and unavailable is as good as wishing for our youth to return. Terrific for the imagination but ultimately fruitless and frustrating.

A. Nonymous

At first this piece thoroughly annoyed me but on subsequent readings I just had to laugh. I find this a very old fashioned view of libraries and completely untrue: in fact Newcastle University Library is a very progressive place and unafraid of change. I see nothing wrong in 'boasting' about that! Obviously Peter Jones is another academic stuck in the past with no idea what libraries and librarians do.

John Kirriemuir

Wouldn't it have been quicker for the author to merely write:

"I don't like change. Any change."

He's probably missed the second half of that days Countdown now, through being so verbose, the poor old bean. Anyway, kudos to The Spectator for transcribing his quilled letter into a digital form.

Byker Banksy

Reading this one can see that the guy has no understanding of the student experience,nor diverse learning styles. It's also not hard to appreciate why he was retired early from Newcastle academic staff. We have all come a long way since the 1990's.
God rest Steve Jobs and God Bless all teachers who still possess the courage and vision to look beyond the cobwebs forming on their own doctoral theses and embrace change

D Short

I haven't used Newcastle University library for more than two years as I have been living most of that time in Tunisia, but I seem to remember it is a vast place and that one can usually find a quiet place to study.

I am sure that is still one of the purposes of a library, to be somewhere you can concentrate and not be distracted.

University and college libraries have for a long time now allowed chattering, probably for twenty years.

The time period seems to coincide with a rise in ignorance and low standards.

I wonder if it is also a coincidence that some of the best thinkers and writers tend to use the (horrendously expensive) London Library, which allows absolutely no talking.

Worth paying for if you can afford it.

And, Nigel Atkinson, I really did think your contribution was some sort of spoof. I see from your second contribution that it was not.

But I loved the phrase 'monied academics'. I don't think there are many of those up in 'Newcassel'!

Bernard

Nigel Atkinson's piece would have been more convincing if it had been more literate. He reminds me of the Waterstone's staff member who didn't realize which gender Evelyn Waugh was.

allan pond

I agree with the above wholeheartedly. maybe Mr Atykinson should declare his own interest in this debate, is he a library manager responsible for the very degradation that Jones laments ? he certainly is srtrong on invective and short on sane argument.

Archie

I once had a very revealing conversation with a bloke in Canada when visiting my in-laws there. It happened that he was a corporate turn-around entrepreneur, in that he took ailing companies and made them profitable. He told me that one of the first things he looked for in a target company was a "mission statement", as this was a good indication that at least one person - and perhaps several - in the company had nothing better to do than produce such gobbledegook! (His words). I would have said from my meagre experience of businesses in North America that there are rich pickings indeed using that yardstick, and I see the same happening here.

Richard Bates

Swansea University library three years ago.
After enduring the irritation of fellow users conversing at a volume that would be irritating in a railway compartment or a restaurant, let alone a library, I paused at the main desk on the way out.
Me: Is there any way of enforcing the rule of silence?
Main desk lady (sincerely astonished): But there IS no rule of silence.
Ah, well, that would explain things.

Richard Bates

Swansea University Library, three years ago...
After enduring conversation conducted by some of the users at a volume that would have been irritating in a railway compartment or a restaurant, let alone a library, I paused at the main desk on the way out.
Me: Is there any way of enforcing the rule of silence?
Main desk lady (sincerely astonished): But there IS no rule of silence.
Ah, well, that would explain things...

Chris

I have to agree with this article. I'm in a college doing some re-training at the moment and the "Library" is now an "LRC" -learning resource centre; which is just like an airport departure lounge.
Whilst the new set up makes organising informal tutorials easier (some of the "chatter" may well be work, private study and contemplation are now totally impossible.
I keep getting thrown out of the "quiet area" because "tutors have booked it for lessons since there aren't enough free computors in actual classrooms"
- bums on seats = funding.
kerching £$£$£$£$£$£$£ !

Bernard

This is all desperately worrying.

On the one hand, society has become, quite simply, far too noisy, although a lot of this is to do with excessive amounts of traffic and a lousy transport infrastructure.

On the other hand, since the millennium, we've also seen an explosion, in numbers, of the sort of moron who believes that he or she has the inalienable right, not only to conduct very personal,but also very noisy phone conversations, anytime and anywhere, but also to play music anytime, anywhere as well.

This doesn't just mean that most train journeys in the UK are simply unbearable, it also means that most public libraries in Britain are unuseable too. It only takes one or two library users to ruin what is supposed to be a quiet atmosphere; and when staff themselves are either chatting noisily, or else sitting at their desks like zombies, doing nothing whatsoever about noisy conditions, one is tempted to walk away forever, and refuse to pay any more Council Tax.

If you can afford several hundred pounds a year then The London Library MAY be a worthwhile investment, but when one reads of mobile phones,chewing gum,sandwiches, I-pods and fizzy drinks, even in the British Library, one is tempted to despair.

Perhaps I can end, however, with recollections by both Michael Caine and Keith Richards: both grew up in the privations of post-war London, but both have also said that the public library was the best place to go, because, whilst they didn't own the books on the shelves, they did have the choice of owning all the knowledge in them. Such knowledge is only ascertainable in a quiet, studious atmosphere, and many so-called librarians would do well to bear this in mind.

MIssy

This is a load of rubbish. I used to work for a university library doing something very similar for good reason and encountered the same rubbish from stuffy, selfish academics there, who wished with all their might that the of books and journals they found exciting were still exciting to other people.

Just because you read them, and you wish other people did, doesn't make it true. Libraries in the 21st Century don't just make guesswork of knowing which items are most regularly used; this information is stored virtually as each item is checked in or out. (Which, by the way, is a phrase you ought to be able to understand if you're as brainy as you claim to be.)

Journals are very expensive because they're usually published outside of the UK and fluctuating currency conversion rates means their value changes regularly. That's why lots of libraries now offer them digitally - much cheaper, and you can print it if you want to use it. If it's no longer in the library, it's because it's not being used much.

As per the kindergarten you've described, I think you're being incredibly selfish, old fashioned and narrow-minded if you think that students should all be sat silently in rows, hunched over piles of books, not looking at or speaking to anybody. Some students thrive on this (I certainly did), but others might want to work together because they work better that way, or they may (heaven forbid) be working in groups. Why on earth might universities want to help them work well that way? Unless they want to be lighthouse keepers, It'll probably come in handy.

The problem is, that academics (and apparently even retired ones) feel that they should get to say how universities are run, how courses are delivered, how messages should be put out to the academic community. What you don't seem to ever understand is that your job is to teach and to learn, not to produce marketing, run academic services or come up with improvement strategies for student life, study and wellbeing. Please quit your whining, and leave it up to the people who know what they're talking about.

If you don't like Newcastle University Library, don't use it. You don't work there anymore. The students you're currently berating have outlived you.

nigel atkinson

I am glad my views have been criticised for illiteracy rather than merit of the content. And invective? If I knew what it meant I would probably agree. I have nothing to do with Newcastle but I do work with libraries in North America. We have looked at the changes made at Newcastle and how effectively they have increased usage and participation under budgetary restrictions far greater in the UK than here in the US. They are far from perfect but have made significant changes - for the better.
If serious debate is reduced to petty emotive tantrums about the change of wording to check-in and check-out rather than how a library delivers books that are legitimate and useful rather than wasted then we're lost.

Eddie

I have to agree with this article, despite knowing how very pompous some academics can be (I used to be one) and how resistant to change everyone is.

The fact is that a library - NOT a 'learning zone' or 'space' or any other silly name - is and should be essentially a place full of books. Yep, books. Not computers, WiFi points, coffee shops and colourful pictures. Just books. It's NOT supposed to be about socialising and fun - but study! Sadly, young people have come out of a school system which has infantilised them, boosted their self-esteeem to such an extent that they think they are all intelligent and right in whatever they want, and - for the most part - extremely badly educated. I know kids with straight A* grades - for English literature too - who only read a book all the way through for the first time at A level, and have never read anything not in that A level list.

The traditional libraries of the UK were and are a jewel - these new 'learning centres/zones/spaces' are not - that are simply yoof clubs masquerading as libraries. Of course, they all win lots of awards from juries comprised of red-framed-spectacle-wearing designers who profit from such taxpayer design follies, and they're all shared as 'good practice' by politically correct librarians who have all come out of the same silly courses. But so what? They are wrong. Every monstrous housing estate from the 60s won awards too. It's a bad sign, winning awards.

But then again, this kind of thing has been going on for years and has been written about in campus novels like A Campus Conspiracy and Crump. I used to be a lecturer myself, but left in disgust - despite financial hardship - because I realised what I was expected to do had very little to do with education at all.

It's a terrible shame - but, if we have a system where practically anyone can go to university, no matter if they can hardly read and have a sub-O level intellect (yet still get a good 2.1, and some become lecturers too!), then what does anyone expect? Universities are just businesses out to attract fee-paying international students, first, and the masses from the UK, second.

It's all about the cash in the end. Which is very, very sad. And Newcastle used to be such a good uni too - not some former poly college.

Andy Brim

About fifteen years ago the library at University College, Worcester, as it was then known, fitted out the library with the huge rolling shelf units that had to be parted by pressing control buttons. These shelves will be familiar to anyone involved with the mass storage of archives and records that are only occasionaly refered to.

So you can imagine what it was like using them when someone was sat in an open aisle perusing a journal; a shelf could not be moved until that person vacated that aisle lest they be crushed.

It was bloody time consuming disaster.

D Short

I wonder if the people here who take against the article would like to be treated by a doctor who had learnt all his clinical medicine and anatomy in a Learning Zone, arguing with others about the 'right' way to diagnose leukemia or cancer, and had an 'opinion' on where the spleen should be.

It doesn't actually matter if the noisy morons who chatter learn anything or not if they are study a crappy, useless and unmarketable subject.

When they are spewed out at the other end and remain jobless or end up flipping burgers while graduates from Oxbridge who enjoy silent 'learning zones' that equip them with the facilities to ingest real knowledge and even wisdom snap up all the top jobs in law, finance, publishing and advertising (and all the top money and top totty which goes with well-earned success).

And to think they are even paying for it and taking out loans, only to end up working at Nandos!

Michael

Fantastic article, needed to be said.

annabel lawson

I agree wholly with Eddie and have this to add: when I was studying I lived in a reverberating hellhole. The library was the only place to concentrate. But mostly it was like a beach or a cafeteria (tip - early on weekends is best). Worst of all was that the expensive foreign texts required for study weren't there. Reason? "They've been souvenired" said the manager with simpering tolerance.