Recently, ANU announced it was closing the Art and Music library branch. Of course, they have been very tight-lipped on the details, so we don’t know exactly what that entails. What we know is: that the physical location of the library will be repurposed into study spaces for students; some materials will be moved into ANU’s main Chifley Library, and the rest will be stored in a repository and can be borrowed by request online. I was very disheartened by this news, so I went on a big borrowing spree last week before the doors closed and borrowed about 30 books. Anything that looked remotely relevant to my research, I borrowed. Yes, I probably should have done this earlier anyway – I have typically done most of my research online, which I suspect is a reason for this decision. But as I’ll go on to explain, I think this is a short-sighted reason to close a library.

The main benefit to a library is that it enables serendipity. This is the fortuitous crossing of ideas which randomly occurs. We have serendipity to thank for many numerous scientific inventions – a famous one being the accidental invention of penicillin, or the invention of the sticky note. Innovation comes from the random merging of ideas, which is of course helped by being in a location where that is designed to occur. Physicist Richard Feynman was eating in a cafeteria one night when he watched a student throw a plate up into the air, saw how it wobbled, and years later won the Nobel Prize in Physics for elementary particles, partially because of how they wobble (I’m not a physicist, but it’s something like that). Serendipity is hugely important to research – any researcher can tell you when they had an “a-ha!” moment, and it is often during a time when they are doing nothing at all in research. Libraries enable serendipitous moments. When I went on my borrowing spree, I wrote down 6 titles on a piece of paper. The other 24 books I borrowed were in and around these books, things that looked interesting or caught my attention and I knew would relate to my research. An online search bar, without this physical presence, does not have the same effect. You are led to exactly what you look for – but in research it is often what we are not looking for that delivers the most interesting results! Currently there are no instructions on requesting material from the repository on the ANU website, but I doubt researchers will be allowed to wonder the shelves to find useful items. Particularly for creative fields, where we draw so much inspiration from elsewhere, the closure of the library is a big loss.

Of course, some material will be moved to the main Chifley library, so the main argument is that the most useful or frequently borrowed items would be put there, and the things that nobody is borrowing anyway would go to the repository. In practice, this would reduce the items in Chifley to student textbooks and assigned texts, which would naturally be borrowed the most (as there are many more students than staff). These will most likely be reference texts, unsuitable to most academic research. I am glad at least some items will remain easily available, but I can’t imagine any of the more useful items will be readily available, as they will not be able to compete with the assigned readings and textbooks.

Of course, the final reason for this change is that more study spaces are needed, and clearly the University thinks converting the library into study spaces is a better use of that location than maintaining it as a library. Mathematically, this does not add up for me. There are two semesters at ANU, of 12 weeks each followed by a three week exam period – totalling 30 weeks – just over half a year where students are actually on-campus. Of course, this is assuming the demand for study spaces is constant over those 30 weeks, which it is not. The first 2, maybe 3 weeks of semester are introductory, and there is rarely assessment due immediately (and certainly not for the majority of courses, particularly in arts and music). The last weeks of semester ease the load as exams finish (the third week of exams has far fewer students still needing study spaces than the first two). In terms of “full loads”, that leaves maybe 22-24 weeks of the year where study spaces are in such demand. The University wants to close a library for the sake of student study spaces which will be used for at most, less than half of the year.

My suggestion would be that the University could utilise its existing spaces far better than needlessly converting an already-used and valuable space. Melville Hall, for instance, is a large space used for examinations. Why could it not be set up in a study configuration during term times, and only packed down if is is otherwise booked? Many of the Kambri spaces could also be adapted like this, but since this venue was licensed out in yet another fantastic example of long-term planning, I doubt the University would want to pay to use its own space. There are many spaces on campus which would be better suited to create study spaces within, but we may never know the reasoning why this decision was made instead.

There has been much uproar over this decision, and I hope ANU realises the importance of libraries to the research process. Storing things in a repository and suppressing serendipity is not the solution. In the meantime, I am glad to have rescued at least some books from their future home in a dusty building for at least another few months.