Hours and services will be restored to D.H. Hill Library on the campus of North Carolina State University, school officials have announced. Public pressure, student activism, work between library officials and the provost’s office, and the state legislature’s joint conference committee budget report all contributed to a restoration of library services, which will be effective Oct. 16.
Over the summer, N.C. State laid off library personnel (including all security personnel), cut back on expenditures and acquisitions, and cut back on library hours, eliminating overnight (N.C. State was the first major library to offer full library services overnight) and Saturday access.
The changes shocked the academic community because so much had been done to build the N.C. State libraries up over the past decade. With help from students, alumni, faculty, and administration, N.C. State Libraries had improved from 101st out of the 105 member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries in 1991 to 35th last year. Also last year, the ARL awarded its first Excellence in Academic Libraries Award to N.C. State.
On Sept. 12 an estimated 500 N.C. State students participated in a “read-in” at D.H. Hill, held as the library’s new closing hours set in. They then proceeded to the home of Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, protesting the library cuts on her doorstep at 1 a.m.
According to Technician, N.C. State’s student newspaper, Fox addressed the students, telling them, “As soon as we get a budget, it’s our first priority to restore the library hours. I can pledge that to you.”
Fox fielded questions from the protesting students for over an hour.
As the read-in portion of the protest extended beyond the library’s new hours of operation, students raised over $200 to reimburse library staff members forced to continue working.
The reason for the protest, as Matthew Spence, a member of N.C. State’s student government, told Technician, is “because the library is a vital part of what we do as a Research I institution.”
Under a plan worked out by library staff and the provost’s office, D.H. Hill will resume overnight services Sunday through Thursday, clos at 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and have two security guards.
In announcing the restoration of services, Provost Stuart Cooper cited the “strong belief that the NCSU Libraries are a central and vital resource for our students and faculty.”
N.C. State Director of Libraries Susan Nutter said that in the early 1990s, former Chancellor Larry Monteith had set a goal of the library reaching the top 50 in five to 10 years. Monteith pledged to get the university the kind of library that would befit a top research university.
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, who as a researcher herself understands the importance of a library to research, has maintained support for the library, Nutter said.
In 1993, hundreds of N.C. State students signed and mailed a letter to Monteith challenging him to support the university’s “inadequate library” to enhance the “intellectual credibility” and “academic reputation of this university.” The pre-addressed, tear-out form letter was published in the Feb. 1993 issue of The State Critic, an independent student publication.
Also that year, NCSU Parents’ Association and the Senior Class of 1993 raised $274,000 in matching money for N.C. State libraries.
Another factor contributing to the library’s improvement, Nutter said, was the special $400 tuition increase granted by the legislature for the 1996-97 academic year. The legislature allowed the increase for only three areas of funding: financial aid, libraries, and faculty salaries.
The increase yielded $8.4 million for N.C. State, half of which went to student aid.
The other $4.2 million went to the library system — the faculty voted to forego their salary increases in favor of improving the library. “We didn’t ask them [the faculty] to do that; that was something they took upon themselves to do,” Nutter said. “It was a surprise.”
As a result of all those efforts, between 1994-95 and 1999-2000, N.C. State recorded the second-largest increase in library expenditures in the country among ARL members.