By Peter Elijah Lim
Staff Writer
The staff of the St. John Paul II Library is clearing out shelves and removing outdated books to make room for more study spaces in the coming academic year.
The side of the library that faces Sts. Cosmas and Damien Hall will be freed up by shifting the library collection toward the side of the library facing Christ the King Chapel. The extra space upstairs will be filled with couches, desks, beanbags and other furniture for students to make use of, as well as more group study rooms.
“When I started here five years ago, the library had never done a full inventory of the books,” said Amy Leoni, director of the St. John Paul II Library.
“What we realized when we did our inventory is that a lot of the books we had on our shelves (had) multiple copies, were falling apart or were old and hadn’t been checked out in at least 10 years.”
These books, once removed from the library’s shelves and databases are sold as part of the library’s $1 book sale. Leoni said that the library staff has been working on weeding out the collection for a year and a half.
“We thought we could better serve students by providing more available study space,” Leoni said. “A lot of times for the people upstairs in the library, there are students sitting on the floor studying because they can’t find a study corral; they can’t find a seat.”
“So, by getting rid of some of those old books, we free up a lot of space in the upstairs so we can shift the whole collection,” she added. “We see on average 625 people come in the library every day … and of course we don’t have that many seats in the library. This was our solution: to do some weeding and make more space on the second floor.”