After continued low ratings in the Princeton Review, there is a new student committee charged with making changes at the Cullom-Davis Library.
Marianna Divietro, a member of the Library Student Advisory Committee, said the committee has already outlined several goals it would like to accomplish.
“Our major goal for LSAC is to get a codified plan of revisions submitted to [University President Joanne Glasser] by November,” she said. “Currently, LSAC’s members are working on a spreadsheet of items that are ‘required’ and ‘desired’ on each floor of the library. Everything from sweeping the place clean of books that are seldom used, to buying new furniture, to reworking the heating and air-conditioning units, to devising a new system of printing has priority on our agenda.”
Executive Director of the library Barbara Galik said the committee was formed to advise her on students’ wants and to offer student opinions and advice. She also said her goals for the committee are to raise the Princeton Review ranking and to make the library more student friendly, starting with the first floor.
“To me, what it needs is a whole overhaul and a new look,” she said. “The furniture needs to be rearranged and computers need to be rearranged. We want to make [the first floor] more of a group study area.”
Galik said the committee will focus on what she said are the major problems such as the age of the existing building, as well as other issues such as temperature control.
“The building was renovated in 1990 to last until the year 2000, and it’s 2008,” she said. “When the renovation took place in 1990, many people in the field didn’t expect that libraries would still be used in this day and age because of innovations such as the Internet. We see now that thinking is wrong. The library continues to be heavily used.”
Right now, the committee is in the process of outlining the issues it has found with the library in order to submit a letter to Glasser.
Galik said the letter to Glasser will also outline the costs to repair the issues.
“No funds have been allocated,” she said. “We hope to give her a sense of what it will cost. None of this is going to be cheap, and we recognize that. This is more a matter of what needs to be done.”
Committee member Jake Schmitt said the only potential problem he sees in getting these projects done is money.
“I feel [the committee’s] goals can be accomplished,” he said. “But they are only hindered by the availability of funds. Right now we are preparing a report to address what we want and desire. Hopefully, the current administration agrees with the changes we would like to make.”
