The Kennedy Library is the first university library in California to win the award and will receive a $3,000 prize.
Aja Frost
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These days, the Robert E. Kennedy Library’s atrium is almost constantly filled with students, heads bent over their books.
But according to university librarian Anna Gold, it was virtually empty two years ago.
“There were one, maybe two students in there at a time,” she said.
A student-suggested, student-led renovation changed all that — and it turned the atrium from an unused space to the library’s nucleus.
The atrium’s transformation is emblematic of the intense focus the Kennedy Library has put on serving the students, an effort that earned it the 2014 Excellence in Academic Libraries award from the Association of College Research Libraries (ACRL).
“Our competition in this category — university libraries — is phenomenal,” Gold said. “The past winners include libraries that we really look up to, like NCSU, Georgia Tech, Grand Valley and the University of Minnesota. We’re still pinching ourselves.”
The Kennedy Library is the first university library in California to win the award. It will receive $3,000 from ACRL.
“We started a little over a year ago with a small crack team to look at the application timeline, think about what it would take to put it together, and decide if we just wanted to just do a quick application with our best writers,” Gold said. “And it was a really easy decision. Let’s do this right.”
Last spring, the entire library staff gathered to brainstorm ideas about what makes the Kennedy Library unique and how it serves the community.
“We wanted to tease themes out of that process,” Gold said. “The application is almost (divided into) chapters.”
This is evident in the way the application, which is 36 pages long, reads like a story — the story of the library. The title is “Open, Inclusive, Connected.”
“What we highlighted, and what I’m proudest of, is our ability to communicate to students that this is your library, that your presence here is what makes it exciting and cool,” Gold said. “You collectively do extraordinary things in the library, from graphics to programming to teaching to research support. Students make this place.”
According to a university press release, Joyce Ogburn, chair of the 2014 Excellence in Academic Libraries Committee, said the Kennedy Library was chosen for its emphasis on student engagement.
“The committee noted the level of student engagement and partnerships across campus,” Ogburn said in the release. “We were taken by the LibRATs (Library Research Assistance Technicians) program, in which highly trained students provide instruction and help other students with research.”
LibRATS was an innovative experiment that was permanently established after its immense success. From 2009 to 2010, there were 64 LibRAT training sessions. In the 2012-2013 academic year, there were 185.
“There’s this idea that students can teach each other as effectively as librarians can,” Gold said. “That’s a very powerful in allowing us to reach more Cal Poly students.”
The committee also highlighted the library’s data studio, which serves as a collaborative space dedicated to statistics, graphic information systems studies and other data-related topics, and their new initiative, Open Access to Textbooks for Students (OATS).
The leader of OATS, Open Education Fellow Dana Ospina, is investigating how to reduce the cost of textbook access for students, and work with faculty to create more access to books.
“We’re really trying to encourage faculty there are alternatives, often very high-quality alternatives, to expensive textbooks,” Gold said.
And in September, the Kennedy Library added over 150 books to the OATS reserve.
Although the Kennedy Library is extremely grateful to ACRL for the award, their main priority always has been, and will continue to be, pleasing the students.
“The atrium was always on the list of things to do,” Gold said. “But when we took a student survey, the response popped it straight to number one.”
For chemistry and biochemistry juniors Stehanie Hoge and Erin Evans, who use the atrium as a study space, the effort is appreciated.
“It’s so nice out here,” said Hoge.
The atrium itself is “Open, Inclusive, and Connected” — just like the Kennedy Library.