The Best Thing a Library Can Be Is Open

In the late 1990s, amid the bubbling euphoria of the digital revolution, some university administrators (you know who you are) not-so-secretly envisioned the day when they could vastly trim their campus libraries. After all, with library resources rapidly migrating online, most information now lived in the ether, they surmised—not on shelves—and was accessible from virtually anywhere. At Whitman College, however, a small, highly regarded liberal arts college in Walla Walla, WA, then-president Tom Cronin had other ideas. In 1997, he told Whitman library director Henry Yaple he wanted the Whitman College library open 24 hours.

Charged with finding a way to offer a round-the-clock library, Yaple, who recently retired after 18 years at the library, says he phoned Michael Freeman, then director at Haverford College, PA, a fellow Oberlin Group school, to tell him about his president's request. Freeman, Yaple says, was enthusiastic. "He said, 'Henry, the best thing a library can be is open.' "

Now, with the migration to digital largely complete, a new trend seems to be emerging, in direct contrast to the early predictions of those administrators who once foresaw declining library use—students are increasingly pushing for a campus library that never closes.

"UConn needs a 24-hour library," wrote one student in a 2005 editorial for the student newspaper at the University of Connecticut. "A 24-hour, seven-day a week library is unique to this era of education," he conceded, "but it is certainly going to be the wave of the future."

In 2003, at the University of Hawaii (UH), Manoa, students also pushed for 24-hour library service. With $17,000 from the provost's office, UH's Hamilton Library responded with a 24/3 experiment, open around the clock Monday through Wednesday. After the spring 2003 semester, according to the Ka Leo, the UH student newspaper, the experiment met with "glowing feedback" and "superpositive" responses from students.

"Students want 24 hours, no question," says Cheryl Elzy, dean of libraries at Illinois State University (ISU), Normal. "They want the whole building, 24 hours." Still, with so many resources available 24 hours outside the library, what's stoking the desire for a 24-hour library? One factor, Elzy explains, is that while information may now live in the ether, students still live firmly on planet Earth.

Even with the convenience of digital access, the basic student need for human interaction persists. "This is the place students want to be," Elzy says. "Here they have everything—the resources, it's safe, it's central, and it's comfortable. It's not that they have to be here to get resources. Over and over they say the library is where they want to be."

Yaple agrees. "Our students have come to depend upon the library being open. They all say that just knowing it is open is important. If they need a quiet place, or if they need to get a book, they know they can get it. I think especially at a residential liberal arts college the library as place is enormously important."

The same is proving true for all kinds of schools, says Sandra Yee, dean of libraries at Wayne State University, an urban, heavily commuter school in downtown Detroit. Wayne State hosts a popular 24-hour room in its library, and Yee says she'll always remember the student who told her that students today come to campus more or less to get together with other students.

But it's not all social. A driving factor, say librarians, is the digital revolution happening in the classroom. Anecdotal evidence suggests that technology is changing more than how students can access resources; it is changing the very essence of teaching and learning. Given the advent of course management systems and online curricula, Elzy says, "we're moving toward 24-hour teaching." Look no further than trends in library design, she says, for confirmation. "In the process of talking about the expansion of our library it's clear that pedagogy is driving the design," she says, specifically citing the boom in information commons–like library space, replete with group study rooms. "How we design new space is directly tied to how classes are being taught."

"We offer a number of courses online," Yee adds, "and that work is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week." With the dawn of the Internet, she explains, distance learning and continuing education opportunities increasingly offer students the liberty to work on their own clock. From community college through graduate school, coursework is becoming more flexible, more technology-based, and more collaborative. "That's why we invest so heavily in electronic resources," Yee says.

Expanding hours or opening a 24-hour room can be a tough sell on the stats alone. But if you open it, Yaple says, the students will come. "You won't see a lot of use in the first weeks," he says, adding that Whitman, with a population of 1400 students, usually has from one to 40 students in the library overnight, depending on what's happening with classes.

During the university of Hawaii's 24/3 trial in 2003, roughly 1800 undergraduates and 300 grad students (out of a population just under 13,000) used the library's all-night hours in the first few months—decent numbers. Administrators estimated the library would need to find about $52,000 to make 24/3 access a reality for the academic year. Unfortunately, the UH experiment didn't get the chance to become reality. In late fall 2004, the UH-Manoa campus suffered a devastating flood that caused millions of dollars in damage to the library, shelving the program for now.

For most libraries, the biggest obstacle to expanding hours is budgetary. But with a mix of technology and dedication, those budgetary challenges can be met. At Whitman, Yaple was given the funds to hire part-time nonprofessional staff to take the overnight shifts. When the 24-hour library was initially approved, Yaple said, faculty members specifically requested students not be allowed to work overnight, for fear it would detract from their studies.

Five years ago, Elzy says, ISU's entire main library floor was open 24 hours and was quite popular but was cut in the "budget crunches that all of us experienced across the country." The threat of losing 24-hour library hours, she says, brought out the best in students. With the library's student budget cut by about $100,000, necessitating a drastic trimming of hours, ISU students made up the shortfall by volunteering their services, giving the library enough flexibility with its budget to blunt the effect on library hours.

Today, ISU uses student volunteers to perform a range of functions during the day. That frees up professional staff to work in the library until 10 p.m. "The students shelve, do preservation, processing, interlibrary loan retrieval, shelf reading, any number of things that are reasonably basic," Elzy says. Milner library hasn't gone back to 24 hours, except for the week before finals each semester, when all six floors of the library are open all night and the library is "jam-packed." But it is open, staffed by seven nonprofessionals until 2 a.m. And in today's world, an 18-hour library—well, that isn't bad at all.

At Wayne State, budget cuts in 2003 also threatened hours. Eventually, the library's 24-hour room was trimmed in the spring and summer. Yee, however, says such a cut is unthinkable for the fall or winter, when the most students are on campus. During those seasons, the David Adamany Undergraduate Library hosts a 24-hour room, five days a week, which Yee describes as a "computer lab with study space." The rest of the building, she notes, is not open. "But with as much electronic information as we have," she says, "students there still have access to a lot [of material]." That space is not staffed with librarians but with "high-level computer lab students," whom Yee describes as well trained and capable.

Staffing is, of course, a challenge. At ISU, where librarians remain on duty only until 10 p.m., Elzy says, grad students work the rest of the evening. Ultimately, however, if your library is searching for staff to keep the library open longer, that's a shot in the arm, says Yaple, noting that the part-timers hired to staff the overnight shifts have given Whitman a "deep bench." Now, when other staff need time off, the part-timers are usually eager to fill in those hours.

As with any all-night venture, security and maintenance are also key issues. At Whitman, a card-key system is used to admit only students after 10 p.m. At Wayne State, the 24-hour area is also protected by a card system—only registered students with a card can get in after 11 p.m. ISU's Elzy agrees that security is a major issue for anyone considering expanded hours. "We never had a problem with security, thank God," Elzy says. "But we worried about it." She says that the library works with university security to set up extra patrols and offers special parking spaces next to the library. The university also has a night-ride bus service so students can get back to dorms and apartments safely.

Yee says the 24-hour room at Wayne State is "wildly popular" with students. "I come in before 8 a.m., and very often I see students in there before the rest of the building opens. It has been a really important part of the services we offer."

If your library has yet to be lobbied by students for a 24-hour space, or at least for extended hours, chances are good that someday soon it will be. When that happens, there is much you can use to examine your options. "One thing I would look at is head count for late nights and early mornings," Elzy says, adding that administrators often live and die by statistics. "How many people are you booting out of the library at night and how many are waiting at the door in the morning?"

Examining library statistics, Elzy noticed that when the library budget was cut five years ago, "it was like a light went off" at 2 a.m., when the library pretty much cleared out, only to begin repopulating about 7 a.m. At Wayne State, Yee says much the same is true—students tended to clear out after 2 a.m. Yaple also agrees, except for a few "hardcore night people." At UH, data showed that approximately 150 users remained in the library after 11 p.m., but that number declined to under 30 by 3 a.m. Thus, if not a bold move to 24 hours, an initial effort to extend hours to 2 a.m. could serve students well.

"I would also look at how much is available electronically," Elzy says. "What do students need—the resources, or the space?" Can your library afford to buy every reference book in electronic format so it's available? Is this too expensive? Also, how effective is the use of chat reference and email reference, and can it be beefed up at certain times when traffic is higher? At ISU, Elzy says email reference at the library usually provides answers to student questions overnight, and that has largely been satisfactory in accommodating a range of student schedules.

"Take a look at your students," Yee says, succinctly. "What are their needs? If there are other facilities offering all-night access, perhaps dorms with computer labs, and much of your campus is residential, you can think twice about offering 24 hours. But I do think [24 hours] is a service that many, many students will use, and we should be looking at it."

From his experience, Yaple says he is convinced that 24-hour access to the library is increasingly essential—and is a natural outgrowth of the digital age. "The Internet is always on," he says. "It is 24/7/365. This is the world students today inhabit. This is how they live." We are in the information age, after all, he says, and the library is logically a major part of that.

"Librarians and administrators are mostly 40-hour-a-week people," he explains. "We're used to the workweek being divided up Monday through Friday, but students don't live like that. They work 20 hours one week and 100 the next. We just don't live the same way anymore, and students today, they are never going to live that way."

Yaple thinks back to Michael Freeman's quote—"the best thing a library can be is open." "I knew he was right when he said it," Yaple says, noting that students at Whitman can now find a book online at 3 or 4 a.m. and knowthey can go get it from the library. It is enormously empowering and, he says, a point of pride for Whitman students and staff. "We spend all this money to stock the library with resources and staff. It's the most valuable asset Whitman College owns," he muses. "But not when it's closed."