Critics say ARS may be detrimental for research
By Allison Sundaram
Orradre Library has begun to shift large quantities of materials into the new Automated Retrieval System, leaving concerns about the lack of an established audit procedure to find lost books and frustration over the effect the system will have on research.
The ARS opened in January 2005, marking the completion of the first stage of Santa Clara's "Library for the 21st Century" project. Storing 11,328 bins, it holds 900,000 volumes of library material, with each bin storing approximately 90 to 120 items.
As part of the second phase of library construction, all of the library's print collections, which include some 800,000 books, will be shifted into the ARS by June 2006. Students will be able to access the books through online requests.
Currently, students can access materials in the ARS, but have complained about long waits for books. And even before the ARS was built, some faculty members and students worried about the loss of the research process of browsing the stacks.
"It's nice for some people who know what they want, but you can't browse the books," sophomore Kellen Shaw said.
The library plans to work with faculty so that classics and required texts within the various fields are placed on the open shelves.
English professor John Hawley, although recognizing some functionality of the ARS, still has misgivings. "I think that once it gets up and going it will operate very efficiently," he said. "But that does not overcome the preference that a lot of scholars in the humanities have for the serendipitous nature of happening on a book in the course of physically mining through stacks."
Problems may not be over once the ARS is fully loaded. According to Brandon Dudley, director of Library Technology Services at Sonoma State University, their ARS was still not completely functional after it was loaded with materials. "I know it took a couple months to load it, and then about a year to get it stable," Dudley said.
Sonoma State has had an ARS since 2000. According to Dudley, a full audit of the system due to a lost book would require pulling out each bin and manually scanning each item within the bin, taking approximately 2000 hours of work.
Orradre Library currently has a search procedure for lost books; however it does not have established criteria specifically for lost books in the ARS.
"We have a procedure for lost books presently, and we would probably amend that to incorporate things for the Automated Retrieval System," Santa Clara Librarian Liz Salzer said.