Correction appended.
As of 2015, Alden Library is the proud owner of more than 3.5 million volumes.
Some of them are housed on campus in the library itself. Others are stored in off-campus storage facilities. The OhioLINK network of Ohio colleges and universities allows students and faculty access to even more books and materials.
Acquiring all of those resources has been an ongoing process throughout Ohio University’s history of more than 200 years. Now, acquiring new library materials involves a chain of librarians and other university employees who work carefully within established budgets to make the library’s collection the best it can be.
Chris Guder, Alden Library’s subject librarian for education, has the task of finding and requesting new books to be purchased that cover children’s literature, counseling and higher education, educational studies, recreation and sports pedagogy, and teacher education.
Sometimes, he gets special requests from graduate students who are looking for specific materials for research purposes. But most of the time, Guder chooses the materials he thinks the education students and faculty may need on his own. The next step is to send the request to the acquisitions department, which checks to ensure the library doesn’t already own the material and that the proper funds are available to purchase it.
Guder said the university does well in providing the library with the financial resources it needs to keep its collection as extensive and updated as it can be.
“Having the most up-to-date information for researchers allows us to be referencing the most up-to-date stuff,” he said. “It gives us a collection that our graduate students can dip into and know that they’re dipping into the most recent stuff as opposed to something that’s five or 10 years old.”
Janet Hulm, the assistant dean for collections and digitization strategies, supervises the acquisitions department, along with those who catalog purchased items and oversee collections. She helps create the acquisitions budget each year, dividing money by which subject may need more than others. For example, the librarians for the College of Arts and Sciences may need more funding than others because the college is so large.
“It reflects the university academic structure,” Hulm said.
Hulm said the acquisitions process has changed dramatically with the advent of the internet and online resources. Purchases can be made on demand. Additionally, the library has shifted from purchasing physical copies of books to more electronic resources. According to the Alden Library website, more than 1 million of the more than 3.5 million volumes owned by the library are e-books.
But, one collection that remains dedicated to physical volumes is the rare books collection. Miriam Intrator, a special collections librarian who concentrates on rare books, checks catalogs and goes to conferences and book shops to seek out new rare books to add to Alden Library’s collection.
“I think (rare books) bring enormous value,” she said. “They allow students to interact hands-on with history and with original materials. They allow us to delve into history that you can’t necessarily get even from online resources and that you certainly wouldn’t get from secondary resources. Each item in special collections often has a story.”
In her searches for rare books, Intrator tries to select volumes that may be of interest to classes that visit special collections regularly, or that may fall within some of Alden’s exceptional subject areas like southeast Ohio history. Additionally, she said the library is working to improve its collections of rare books on women’s, African-American and Native American history.
“We’re basically trying to diversify the voices that you find, because a traditional rare book collection is mostly white and male,” Intrator said. “So we’re trying to open that up as much as possible.”
Intrator said many people may think rare books are only accessible to professors or others with exclusive permission, but that is not the case. She said the special collections department hopes to encourage all who are interested to visit the fifth floor and browse the rare books they may be interested in.
“We hope that it helps students connect to the library more broadly,” she said. “Everything that’s in our collections kind of belongs to students and the community. So we just hope it’s another way of creating connections.”
Correction: A previous version of this report misstated the location of the special collections library. The article has been updated to reflect the most accurate information.
