Check out a librarian!

Back in 1986, a librarian named Constance Mellon identified a problem she labeled as “Library Anxiety”.  She noted that college students in particular were prone to being ashamed of their research skills to the point where they didn’t want to ask for help.  One can imagine that the rise of the internet did little to alleviate this problem.  After all, no one wants to ask a question about something like library anxiety, only to get a link from Let Me Google that For You as a response.

In order to address library anxiety, Langsdale has been working with students in UB’s Information and Interaction Design, and Integrated Design programs to develop a Check Out a Librarian (COaL) app. This app makes talking with a librarian just as easy as finding a match on Tinder. To begin using COaL you will need to have a profile, but the app makes this easy by automatically pulling in your interests and reading habits from sites like Facebook and Goodreads.  Once you have a profile, COaL will show you photos of librarians in your area who share similar reading habits.  If you find a librarian that looks relatively unintimidating, just swipe right to indicate your interest.  If the librarian swipes right back, the app will help you arrange a meeting with a librarian at a nearby independent bookstore or a café with free wifi.

So far, most the people beta testing the app say that it is really helpful for breaking the ice with librarians.  One COaL user (Isobel, age 17) indicated that she may even be able to approach one in the library now.  “Librarians are like priests” Isobel said.  “You can tell them you want information on just about any subject and they never look at you weird. It's like a rule or something.”  Many of our librarian participants benefit too, realizing that they can be themselves, even when not in a building with the word “library” etched over the entrance.  As librarian Jane Jameson put it “You can take the girl out of the library, but you can’t take the neurotic, compulsively curious librarian out of the girl.”

In the future, we hope to expand the beta to more and more cities until it is available worldwide. If you are interested in participating in COal, either as a Librarian or as a Reader, you can sign up here to be notified when it becomes available in your area.

New plan calls for Langsdale Library building to be demolished and replaced

Dateline: April Fool's Day, 2015

In a dramatic turn of events, the plan to renovate Langsdale Library has been scrapped in favor of a plan to demolish the current building and construct a replacement on the existing site. Peter Keating of the renowned architectural firm Francon & Hayes has been chosen to design the new structure.  As Mr. Keating himself has said, you should “choose the builder of your library as carefully as you choose the books that inhabit it,”* and the University of Baltimore has certainly done that with this selection.

At first glance, the plans for the new library may raise some eyebrows. For example, unlike other new buildings on campus, there is only one pane of exterior glass. Mr. Keating explained the decision saying that “windows are less important than the dignity of a building’s façade”.**

In addition, the new building is not so much a single building as a collection of smaller ones. “It turns out that demolishing a building is really expensive. Especially when we have to make sure there is no damage to the Lyric which sits right next to it,” explained Library Director Lucy Holman. Since the demolition of the current building will require the use of most of the funds allocated for the previously planned renovation, Mr. Keating demonstrated why he was chosen to lead this project by devising a brilliant plan to replace Langsdale with an installation of 25 Little Free Libraries on the site. Head of Book and Document Delivery Carol Vaeth, who has installed a Little Free Library at her home, was ecstatic over this plan. The Little Free Library really helps to “create a sense of community. People stop and talk to each other” while browsing the books, she said. 

"little free libraries" by david silver, on Flickr CC by-NC-SA 2.0
Some day, the site of Langsdale could look like this.

Library Director Holman explained that the university hopes to raise funds to provide more than just the 25 Little Free Libraries. A special incentive will be offered to anyone who donates $300 or more, so that we can order additional “Urban Readers”. The $300+ donors, as long as they are able to come to the site of the Langsdale Installation and assemble a little free library for us, will be given the opportunity to engrave their initials on the back. The library expects many members of the UB community to be very excited at the opportunity to participate in this project. “I believe we will have at least 27, maybe even 28 of these things by the time we are done,” exclaimed Director Holman.

* This may not be exactly what Mr. Keating said, but it is reasonably close.

** This is an actual quote, although it may have been said in a slightly different context.

WAIT, DON'T PANIC: This was entry was posted on on April Fool's Day . You can read about the actual renovation plans here: https://theubpost.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/library-insider-3/