W.A.C. BENNETT LIBRARY: Plus ça change

Library collage

The hub and heart of the university
by Lynn Copeland, University Librarian
Images courtesy of SFU library management office

In the beginning. . .

As I browsed through the early SFU library archives, I was struck by how 40 years later we are still motivated by the vision of university librarian Don Baird. He saw a “radical library” focused on collections to support the burgeoning curriculum, discipline-based liaison services, educational services, interlibrary co-operation, and innovative use of technology. Today, the library staff is proud of the strong collections, innovative use of technology, and a highly successful liaison librarian program whereby discipline-based librarians work directly with faculty and students in collection development, reference, instruction, and research support.

In a warehouse under the old Cambie Bridge, Baird and his staff, in a short 18 months, hustled to develop the 30,000 volume collection, catalogue, and services for opening day. The library featured an automated circulation system and serials list, interlibrary loan services, and the longest opening hours in Canada, to 2 a.m. It was truly a remarkable achievement, and it was accomplished only through Baird’s dogged pursuit worldwide of the best collections, most advanced technology, and most talented staff.

Baird early advocated the importance of collaboration among libraries, and he was key to the establishment of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, an organization that continues today to have a major role in issues such as intellectual property, scholarly communication, and e-learning. Baird also negotiated reciprocal borrowing privileges for faculty and graduate students with UBC and other libraries, arrangements that set the model for the current agreement allowing faculty and students from any Canadian university library to borrow from any other.

Characterized in the Peak as the “Hub of SFU Life,” the W.A.C. Bennett Library, named in the 1980s after the long-serving premier, originally housed the university administration and registrar’s office as well as the library. Despite the building’s bold architectural statement, Baird commented on the difficulty of providing effective library service within the long, narrow building, which continues to present challenges.

Growing Collections

The opening day vision of the library housing primarily an undergraduate collection supported by interlibrary loans for research purposes persisted until the early nineties, at least in some quarters. Happily, opinion and support coalesced after the strongly worded 1991 review, and collection development is now well financed. The strong collections budget, active gifts, and extensive investment in online journals have ensured that the SFU collection is comparable to any but those of the oldest institutions.

The collection is enhanced by a growing database of digital resources created at the library, including editorial cartoons, Harrison Brown’s 1937 photographs of China, and the Multicultural Canada project. As funding is obtained, Multicultural Canada ultimately will encompass the broad range of materials relating to western Canada’s ethnic immigrants. This co-operative project with the Sien Lok Society of Calgary, the University of Calgary, the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, University of Victoria, Vancouver Public Library, and the Chinese Canadian History Society of B.C. will shortly include a database of the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, 35 years of the Chinese Times (published in Vancouver 1915-92), interviews with southern Alberta Chinese, Ukrainian books, and comprehensive resource links.

The Place
Annabel Lyon/Geist Magazine 49: “The Simon Fraser University library, where I pursue undergraduate studies 10 years later, is Alexandria on a spaceship. The campus – a lot of raw concrete and straight lines, descending planes, ancient Greece by way of the planet Zargon – is bleak and austere, miserably cold in winter because of the altitude. [The campus sits, fortress-like, on top of Burnaby Mountain, in another Vancouver suburb.] The library is the mother ship: it’s vast, it’s warm, it hums, you can sleep there if you need to, head on your arms in a carrel, and no one will bother you. The holdings seem to go on forever and I sniff through the stacks like a distracted truffle pig – Siddhartha, E.M. Forster on Virginia Woolf, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Art Deco and Aubrey Beardsley, Jean Rhys, commedia dell’arte, Aristotle – too greedy to focus on any one subject for long.”

The library’s institutional repository will make accessible online all SFU theses as well as papers and other research materials prepared by SFU faculty and students.

Special collections got an early start with strong collections developed under the guidance of English professors Ralph Maud and Jared Curtis. Maud led the development of the contemporary literature collection of poetry, manuscripts, magazines, and tapes associated with the post-modern poets. In a similar fashion, Curtis’s mentorship led to the development of one of the finest collections of books relating to Wordsworth and his circle.

With the support of the history department, local archives were collected and are now located in the SFU archives. The library continues to develop unusual, valuable, and unique collections including B.C. publishers’ records, small and private press archives, B.C.-related authors’ papers, editorial cartoons, and materials relating to gay and lesbian issues, the B.C. Social Credit Party, the environment, history of the west and Canada, as well as works of book artists, papermakers, binders, and illustrators.

To illustrate the breadth and depth of the library collections and to represent its diverse nature, four new additions to the collection will celebrate SFU’s 40th anniversary: a specially bound copy of Hugh Johnston’s Radical Campus, the papers of Paul St. Pierre, the personal poetry library of bp nichol, and the online House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801-1900 for Britain, the colonies, and the wider world.

Ever changing

No library can provide everything, and second university librarian Ted Dobb rightly characterized the interlibrary loan service as providing access to our “secondary collection.” Under Dobb’s leadership, some 30 other libraries in western Canada funded SFU library’s systems group to develop award-winning software, reSearcher, that allows faculty and students to search multiple online indexes and catalogues simultaneously, look at articles online, request print materials from other libraries, and save citations in a citation management system. This continuing development and use of technology is fulfilling the library’s motto of “Our Library is where YOU are,” providing equivalent access for campus, distance, and online students.

Today’s Alumni Information Commons, funded by the Alumni Association, opened in 2003. Students are now able to perform online searches and work, knowing that librarian and technician support is at hand as well as online. Income from the alumni library endowment is also supporting the creation of the new media resource centre to replace the inadequate media collection room.

The People
One charter library staff member’s recollection: In the sixties, the finance department was located
in the library, although they had a separate entrance. Occasionally there would be sit-ins. Everything would be
locked down. But the library escaped that.
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The library staff’s devotion to duty is legendary, with staff at
one time keeping the library open as a refuge for students trapped on the hill during a particularly fierce snowstorm.
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Over the years, library staff have achieved campus recognition, perhaps most notably with the efficient loans counter “Purple Guy,” Rufus Polson, who featured in a
number of Peak cartoons.”

Over the next few years, the library building will morph into perhaps its most exciting form yet as the student learning commons (SLC) becomes part of the services offered on the entry level. Opening in September 2006, SLC services will provide support for students as they pursue the new writing, quantitative, and breadth requirements in the curriculum. Further development will include the thesis defence room, the locus of what one researcher characterized as the third most important day in his life after marriage and childbirth.

By articulating the dual purpose of the library building for active learning and contemplative study, the facilities will meet both

student and faculty needs. Over the next few years, the special

collections’ capacity for its valuable materials is expected to increase and there will be expanded space for the print collection, which continues to grow alongside the burgeoning electronic resources. The plan is to expand capacity while preserving the architectural integrity of the building.

SFU library is now host to OJS, open source software developed by the Public Knowledge Project, which allows journal editors and publishers to manage the submission, peer review, subscriptions, and publication of scholarly online journals and is part of the national Synergies e-journals project. More than 300 journals worldwide now use the OJS software. A second portion of the software, the Open Access Harvester, has enabled SFU to host the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ index to their digital repositories.

What next? As the library continues to thrive and grow to support the intellectual life of the university, the vision articulated by Don Baird lives on. The work of the talented and dedicated librarians and staff who have been key to the success of the library is carried on by those who have come in their stead, and Baird’s vision will
continue. aq

Library Facts

Long-time library employee Henry Jack
was a charter student and the first First Nations grad from SFU.
Two other charter students continue to work in the library.
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The library experimented with 24-hour service, but it was used only lightly.
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SFU library has the lowest percentage of expenditures devoted to
operations among B.C.’s large public libraries.
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Compared to its peer institutions, the library provides almost
twice as much instruction per student, loans more print materials,
and answers more reference questions.
Students download twice as many items from the e-reserves collection as other universities.
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The library was the first in Canada to implement the Ask Us Here
roving reference service to augment the interactive chat reference, email, in-person, and phone reference.
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The collection, if laid end to end, would
stretch from SFU Vancouver all the way to Kamloops.
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At 1.5 million volumes, the print collection is 50 times larger than
it was on opening day.
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The library has 16,000 online serials, including some 7,000 titles which were previously unaffordable.