Letter: URI Library offers more than books

03/12/09 - To the Cigar,

Thanks for the nice article on LibQual in the March 10 issue of The Good 5-Cent Cigar. We are happy to be offering the survey a second time to measure satisfaction against expectations of the services we provide to you and the URI community. These metrics will help us plan a better learning environment and efficient service points. It will also help us to plan and gather support for funding in order to provide resources in line with your needs.

I would like to respond to the freshman quoted prominently in your article. The library is more than just books and a building. It is also the people and funding that provides the electronic resources that we all enjoy remotely from our laptops. It is the people and funding that provide services like Interlibrary Loan and e-mail requests and instant messaging for reference information.

It's also the place where professors place class material for you to use in the library or online through its Reserves Services. It is also the home of the university's archives, our institutional memory going back to 1888. It is also Special Collections, which holds many one-of-a-kind things, the Media Resource Center, a broad collection of DVDs and videos, and the Curriculum Materials Library, an essential tool of the School of Education. The library is also the people that teach the information literacy classes that train library users how to navigate their way through all this information.

This is a lot of stuff, and it all takes people and funding to organize, maintain and preserve them for researchers now and into the future.

The physical building offers meeting, programming, and display space for the university community to express itself in a myriad of ways. So I think the freshman will find that during his few years here, and perhaps beyond, that the library has a lot to offer. Supporting the University Library gives the opportunity to support the research needs of the entire URI community. I do hope your readers will take the time to fill out the survey. It can be found at: http://www.uri.edu/library/new/libqual2009.html.



Sarina R. Wyant

University Archives and Library Special Collection