It's Academic

It’s time for true confessions, and I must stress that what follows are my personal musings, and are not necessarily those of my colleagues or of other members of the College & Research Division.

In a recent regional meeting that represents a variety of types of libraries, one public librarian mentioned an upcoming event featuring Nicholas Sparks.  My reaction?  “Who?”  Upon a moment’s reflection, I realized that I have, of course, heard of Sparks and I believe that once upon a time I read one his books, but the works he produces are not those that I regularly encounter in my academic library.  I quipped at that meeting, “I could walk blindfolded to – and talk extensively about – the New Cambridge Medieval History reference set, but Nicholas Sparks? Not so much.”

My library prides itself on building a collection that supports the undergraduate curriculum (a noble venture, if I do say so), but that has not included putting much weight behind developing a collection that will encourage students to read outside of course requirements.  If studies show – and they do – that students who read for pleasure have more expansive vocabularies, better reading comprehension, and stronger verbal skills,[1] why are colleges (like mine) not directing more resources, both financial and human, into cultivating and promoting leisure reading collections?

Many schools have adopted small collections, such as the collection that my library leases.  It provides our students with access to some best-selling titles, both fiction and non-fiction, but it is small.  We include that collection in the freshman library orientation game, we have promoted it from time to time in the college student newspaper, and we include notice of popular new additions to the leisure reading collection on the library’s digital sign and in our table tent signs.  I suppose that we do an adequate job of making it known that we have such an offering, but I do not think we are really encouraging our students to pick up any of those books to read for the pure joy of it.

In my opinion, we do college students a disservice by not providing anything along the lines of readers’ advisory.  Of course there are those students who do read for the fun of it, and who have befriended the librarians, and who may talk with us about book preferences with us on occasion, but we offer no across-the-board reading suggestions.

We have the fortunate circumstance of being located one city block away from a wonderful public library, and our students (by merely showing their college ID card) can sign up for borrowing privileges from that expansive collection, but I fear that by saying, “If you want something fun to read, you should walk to the public library,” we are furthering a culture wherein college students rarely read anything that is outside of class requirements.  As a member of a profession at least largely dedicated to the culture of the book and the printed word (either in print or online), this neglect of leisure reading in an academic climate troubles me.

Alison Gregory – Lycoming College