New library plans: a pain in the ARS

By Marcos Moreno

I like technological advances as much as the next guy does, but I was under the impression that such things were supposed to make life easier. I'm not talking about cell phones, Tivo or digital cameras; I'm talking about Orradre Library's Automated Retrieval System, commonly referred to as ARS.

Call me old-fashioned, but I liked wandering through the stacks, looking for one book and coming back with a handful of useful material. Browsing is conducive to research papers. But the ARS is making this research strategy more difficult, and, someday soon, you won't be able to browse at all.

And I'm not the only student who liked the old way better. Community Facilitator Evan Sarkisian said, "No one ever had problems getting books before, in my opinion. There were benefits to having the books set up for browsing because, if you were looking for a certain type of book, all that type of book would be around the book you were looking for."

With the ARS, you only get one chance at the right book, and you have to know what you want. Then you place an order, and, within thirty minutes, the ARS is supposed to have your book waiting for you. The idea seems simple and not altogether bad. But students have had problems with the ARS. For one thing, the wait can be a lot longer than half an hour, and sometimes the ARS doesn't deliver the right book. Business major Eric Gotthelf said that he "would like the convenience of being able to get in, get my book quickly and get my homework done in a reasonable amount of time. I don't want to be waiting around the library for half an hour."

I'm all for convenience, and I hope that the ARS, once it is fully operational, actually helps students. But right now, it doesn't seem very convenient. If you know what you want when you walk into a library, doesn't it make it easier to go right up to the stacks, get your book and leave? I don't think I need a robotic arm to do that. Brendan Harper, a junior, said that "the ARS, in theory, is a cool idea. In practice, it doesn't work, costs a lot of money and is not effective."

The important thing to keep in mind is that this is an ongoing project. Luckily, the ARS hasn't reached completion yet. Alyssa Carroll, a sophomore and library staff member, was quick to point out that "it's difficult to tell at this point because we are in a transition phase, but, hopefully, it will be beneficial (to the students)." I'm putting my faith in the university that, in the near future, this system is going to pan out. But right now, it's a source of frustration.

To put it plainly, I don't go to Orradre Library anymore unless I'm forced to. I don't want to play the waiting game. It's much easier to get research data online. Luckily, you don't need the physical library to do research because you can do this from Orradre's Web site -- it's user friendly and easy to browse. And once construction starts on the university's new library, students won't have a choice -- we will all have to go online because the university is tearing down the old one.

But, if you enjoy browsing through stacks like countless other students, there are a lot of options. There's the Santa Clara City Library located just off Homestead. Then there's my personal favorite, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library on San Jose State University's campus, which was recently opened to the public. It seems far out of the way, but I guess students are just going to have to weigh their options.

Marcos Moreno is a junior English major.