Welcome to the web site of the University of Washington'sDepartments of Physics and Astronomy
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Committee co-chairs: Marcel den Nijs (Physics) Woody Sullivan (Astronomy) Faculty committee members: Lillian C. McDermott George Bertsch Gerald Miller Student committee members: Gregory Crosswhite Lauren Pope Jennifer Porter Brian Smigielski Andrew Spott Our valued library staff consists of: Pamela Yorks, Librarian Terry Saporta, Library Technician |
Purpose:
This web site serves as a chronicle and resource to the pertinent documents, of an ill-fated and misguided attempt by the UW Libraries during May 2009 to take away one of our primary teaching and research facilities. This attempt failed.Timeline:
In the morning of Monday May 04, 2009, Lizabeth (Betsy) Wilson, Dean of University Libraries, informed David Boulware, Chair of Physics, by phone of her intent to close our Physics Astronomy Library (PAL) starting July 2009. She did this with an alarming sense of inevitability and in the absence of any foreboding or consultation. This committee was born within half an hour of that phone call.On May 06, 2009, Lizabeth (Betsy) Wilson, presented her case to an open Physics Faculty meeting in PAB A110 filled by an overflowing assembly of Physics and Astronomy Faculty and Students. Marcel den Nijs, in his role as chair of this committee, introduced a motion expressing our strong opposition and listing the core issues. This motion passed unanimously after intense discussion.
During this same open Faculty meeting, Gregory Crosswhite, Spokesperson of the Physics Graduate Student Council, presented Dean Wilson with a 19 page compilation of testimonials by Physics and Astronomy students, collected within a time span of just a couple of hours immediately preceding the meeting. Since then, this flood of testimonials has only grown. Gregory presented Dean Wilson the updated compilation of testimonials by e-mail on Thursday May 07.
After this initial rush of events, the chairs of Physics and Astronomy and the UW Library started negotiating towards a solution that would preserve our branch library. This resulted near the end of May into a signed memorandum of understanding in which the Physics-Astronomy Library remains open, mostly as before, see below.
Issues raised in our initial response:
We are deeply disturbed by the failure of the UW Libraries to follow proper process and to properly inform themselves. In particular, an internal UW libraries Task Force on New Models of Service Delivery was formed in mid-January of this year, with the explicit charge to investigate consolidation of the branch libraries. This mandate was guided by a centralistic long term view of the UW Libraries, which to us is fundamentally flawed. The Physics-Astronomy community was neither consulted nor informed about this process.We are faced here with an unwarranted entanglement of a desire to implement a flawed long term UW Libraries vision with the need to deal with the current short term budget crisis. A budget cut of 12% is huge, but on the scale of our modest PAL operating budget would translate to only $12K in a flat across the board implementation. This is a relatively small amount of savings that can surely be achieved by means other than closure, thus avoiding the long term permanent damage it would inflict on the UW Libraries and their current and future function to support our teaching and research.
The architectural beauty of our PAL, located on the 6th floor of our only one decade old Physics and Astronomy building is well known. It is one of the very rare UW branch libraries specifically designed for its purpose. It is a place where students and faculty like to dwell, study, and browse. It is an unique space that will remain a valuable asset in any reasonable future library scenario.
To quote from the Mission Statement page of the University Libraries:
"The University of Washington Libraries will anticipate and meet the information needs of our communities in their search for knowledge. We will do this at any time and any place. We will use our extraordinary staff and our world-class portal to resources and services in creating a model information literate community."
This is a commendable mission for the University of Washington Libraries to have, and we strongly applaud it.
Our community of Physicists and Astronomers needs to have rapid and proximate access to the entire assembly of intellectual tools developed over many years in our field, in order to be effective in our own mission to push forward the frontiers of knowledge. This involves more than just being able to look up papers online; it requires that we have access to the books that bind the ideas of research into a form that makes them readily understood, and to the older journal articles that contain deep insights written in a time before electronic data retrieval even existed. It requires that we be able to browse through the collection of writings on a topic so that we can discover ideas that we hadn't even known to look for.
The Physics-Astronomy Library serves us in all of these ways, and even more: it provides a beautiful space for learning and contemplation. So in short, through our PAL, the University of Washington Libraries has already been doing an a exemplary job connecting our community to the knowledge that it needs in the time and place where it is needed. If it closes the Physics-Astronomy Library, however, and moves our resources away from us and scatters them elsewhere into oblivion, then it ceases to do so. If this is allowed to happen, then the forces of ignorance that we battle will have grown stronger.