This semester, I worked on collections development for the history section (specifically D) of Stanley Library. I started by printing out the short version of the Library of Congress’ D classification system, and noting down each book in the library in relation to its classification, getting the end result of a list containing every D book in the library, which Library of Congress sections were empty, and which were low. I put the list into a Google Document and shifted into processing papers from the 2012-2012 book purge, recording each D book in a different Google Document. Later, I gathered the purged books which could help fill gaps in the current library collection into another document, and searched up each book on the internet in order to find the prices, summaries, and advise which ones might be beneficial to buy back for the library. The final Google Doc contained a list of the most hopeful books with prices and links to their respective Amazon pages, sorted by relevant course and ranked by importance.
I also started learning how the library runs; for example, how to re-shelve books and movies, and how to add books to the library collection (the stickers, at least). Working on book recommendations for collections development familiarized me with the Library of Congress system in the process, and the necessary information to have before selecting a book.
History is important to modern times because it shows us where we came from, how things got the way they are, contains all the other disciplines, reveals patterns, and provides advice for future action if appropriately studied by revealing what has worked well in the past, and why. The history of our nation, for example, can generate pride for what we have accomplished and our great beginning, and patriotism in case of war. Studying history helps you to understand individual people from other cultures, because people are shaped by their cultural and historical background.
Knowing history gives a deeper understanding of other fields, because “everything is history”; if you’re studying something else – literature, science, etc. – knowing the history relevant to that subject will allow you to understand its context and background more deeply. For example, if one was studying cholera, on the scientific level one might learn about transmission, the classification of the pathogen itself, its life cycle, and the disease’s symptoms. If you knew the history surrounding cholera, you would understand the various treatment methods that have been tried in the past, the medical paradigm in which those treatments were conceived, the ways that cholera has spread throughout the world and has mutated, and affected different countries. Essentially, knowing the history of what you’re studying can help you to understand how that thing is relevant to the real world.
The serious study of history teaches and enhances critical thinking, researching, and writing skills, which are useful in all fields and throughout life. I say the serious study because you don’t automatically gain these skills just by memorizing facts about the past. Rather, these require you to put effort into carefully examining different sources, thinking methodically through how they interact with each other and other layers of history, contradict each other, how plausible they are, their background, what the authors might have to gain or lose by what they say; in short, thoroughly interrogating all evidence to understand the reality of things in a living, interactive way, not memorizing dead facts which do not give a grasp of the currents of the world. This process trains your mind to think critically in all areas of life, making you less gullible and susceptible to deceit, whether intentional or not.
Each course relates to the modern world differently.
British History teaches about our mother country and the currents of thought from which we are descended. Learning about the history of a country is integral to understanding the psyche of those people; for example, the difference between the basic ways that Americans and Japanese see government, duty, and civil rights. America was founded with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. These see humans as created equal, not naturally subservient to any other human, no matter their station. We do not recognize a king. There are fundamental rights outlined and assumed in those papers, and strong ideas about what a good government must be.
Americans are born and raised assuming that all men are created equal, that everyone has a voice in the government, that we all have the right to publicly assemble for redress of grievances, bear arms, have a free press, and that the government is meant to be a servant of the people, not the other way around. Japan is completely different; their core value, as of 1862, is loyalty to the emperor, whereas ours is liberty. Without knowing the history of the countries, one will not understand those differences, or the reasons for them, and considerable confusion tends to result.
American history includes understanding discussions and disagreements that are still going on today, and finding good solutions for today’s problems requires knowing what people have tried in the past, and what worked or failed. This sequence of courses helps students to understand the thoughts behind our country’s founding documents, politics, and the social undercurrents throughout the past 250ish years.
World history gives a great overview of the world, into ancient history, and even though it touches most things only shallowly, still gives the students a taste of other cultures and ways of thought. While this understanding could come through specialized classes, and would go deeper in those classes, the advantage of World History as an overview is that it helps students to see the big picture of history and connect events and people from different times and places. When studying just one specific part of history, it can be easy to slip into seeing it as separate from the rest of the world. In reality, everything affects everything else, and that's what students learn to understand in World History courses.
History of Barbarians widens our horizons out to the East, Asia, and into ancient history, studying the Mongols, Huns, and Visigoths (among others). While that field may appear esoteric and irrelevant to the present day, it is quite the contrary. Studying “barbarians” and their interactions with different cultures, such as the Greeks and Romans, can help us to think about how we interact with other cultures and peoples in the present day. What helps mutual understanding? What hurts it? How did people get along in the past, or fail to do so? Despite all that has changed between their times and ours, the ancient civilizations still have many lessons to teach us.
Greco-Roman history is useful because the Greeks and Romans helped found Western civilization, and America is very much a continuation of that civilization. Learning about the people who shaped the beginnings and courses of these thoughts helps us to understand, deeply, where many things about our country and base assumptions come from. Democracy, for example, comes from Athens. Rhetoric (the art of persuasion) was clarified and improved by Greeks and Romans. Most of the myths and legends that children learn growing up come from the ancient Greeks. Even Aesop’s Fables, which probably helped to shape some of America’s morality, come from Greek culture.
Weeding is the practice of occasionally going through the stacks of the library and removing outdated books so that they can be replaced with new ones more aligned with current knowledge. This can be done in right and wrong ways. A wrong way, for example, would be rapidly disposing of 44,000 books without giving the faculty time to advise on which books in their respective disciplines ought to stay, and which to go. A right way would be to make small changes when necessary and discuss it ahead of time with the relevant faculty, especially asking advice on which books might be suitable and accurate replacements.
As new discoveries are made and mainstream intellectual thought changes, the catalog of books in the library becomes less relevant, outdated. To keep the collections in line with current thought, it is necessary to purchase newer books with up-to-date research; unfortunately, libraries do not have infinite space, so other books must be discarded to make room. The discarding process, or weeding, should be done carefully, making sure to preserve at least a few books from each era of thought. The faculty of whichever subject is being investigated should be consulted, both in which books are the most important to retain and for ideas on what new books might be wise choices to bring in.
Libraries are meant to be repositories of knowledge, specifically in the form of books. Therefore, everything in them should further that purpose. It may be tempting to equate the goal of preserving knowledge and books with studying, but while libraries are often used as study spaces, this is only a secondary goal, and should never take precedence over the main one: storing knowledge and making as much as possible available to as many people as possible. I think that supplementing the actual library with study spaces, such as desks tucked into nooks between shelves, or small tables in central gaps for group study, is useful. This can help to draw more students into the library, and both having those areas available and having students there at them makes the library seem more welcoming, accessible, and truly the heart of the campus.
However, replacing large chunks of the library shelving with spaces reserved only for studying is harmful both to the purpose of the library and to the students who use it. The benefit of having study spaces in the library is that, when they’re interwoven, the student has to explore the library itself, the stacks, to reach the studying areas; he gets used to being in the library and becomes comfortable there; he has more chance and reason to see the books available and be tempted into reading them; he eventually gets an emotional bond with the library, in a way. All of this is destroyed when the library and the study spaces are clearly separated, especially if this separation is as wide as putting them on different floors of the building. Instead of the study spaces helping students flow through the library and become comfortable there, the separation would remove one of the students’ reasons for coming to the library, not to mention that it would most likely take major amounts of space previously used for shelving, which directly harms the library’s main goal of preserving and distributing knowledge.
