by Zach Miller
Quick Summary
With its student union under renovation, the library at Carleton College has become an even more important center of student and faculty life. It houses an impressive collection of first editions, alongside well-appointed study spaces and a staff that is eager to help.
Gould Library is perched on a slope that descends from the north end of Carleton College's campus green. The building is nestled against the slope in such a way that when students enter the library, they're already on the fourth floor.
That makes getting to the Bob and Carolyn Nelson First Editions Collection pretty easy. The collection is held on the fourth floor, near the library entrance. It includes Minnesota’s only first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "Great Gatsby." There's also a first-edition (second printing) copy of the King James Bible and a large number of facsimile copies of medieval manuscripts. Most of the first editions are by American or British authors. When I approached the book case, pictured above, my eyes were immediately drawn to the first editions of John Updike's Rabbit Series. The collection, valuable as it is, isn't permanently locked away. Professors bring its books into their classrooms. The Art Department, where the book arts, including bookbinding, are still taught, accesses it regularly. Art faculty also rely upon the library's large collection of custom-made artists' books.
The library's more traditional resources get lots of use, too, and gate counts are returning to pre-pandemic levels. On any given day during the school year, about half the students use the library. Its classrooms are very popular with liberal arts faculty. The library also offers ample art-filled open study spaces and 19 individual and group study rooms, available on a first-come, first-served basis. Student groups and tutors use them for meetings, and some professors even use the library for office hours. Students claim that the atmosphere becomes progressively more peaceful as you descend through the building, down the hill and away from the entrance, but the entire space seemed like a student's paradise to me.
"Our students really do use the library, and they seek out staff for help," College Librarian Brad Schaffner told me. "And when they do, they find a staff that is eager to help them." Students make up an important part of that staff. In fact, it's the 40-50 student employees who run the library from 5:00 p.m. until it closes at midnight (or 2:00 a.m. during finals), and on the weekends.
The library's 27 professional staff members provide expert support to faculty on digital humanities projects and manage a general collection that includes 1.8 million digital volumes and approximately 500,000 physical volumes. When a student needs a book that is unavailable, library staff often simply purchase it. Since the pandemic, there has been a marked increase in the use of digital collections, a fact that is reflected by the 78 percent of the acquisitions budget devoted to digital resources.
The reference staff conducted 156 instruction sessions last year, and special collections staff taught 36 classes. The Library's Special Collections and Archives focus largely on the history of the college and publications by staff and students. Archives staff responded to 500 inquiries last year. Each year, roughly 300 students submit their senior paper to the college's digital repository, operated through Bee Press.
Carleton's Quantitative Resource Center, a faculty-student collaboration, is housed at the library. The Center offers help with math and statistics, managing data, creating graphs, and using related software tools. Its tutors offer drop-in tutoring 4:00-10:00 p.m., Sunday through Thursday.
