Students protest uni book cull plan

Crowds of book-borrowing students swarmed through the University of Sydney’s main library on Wednesday afternoon packing the aisles of usually tranquil bookshelves.

Hundreds turned up to the ‘read-in’ to protest the University’s decision to cull more than half a million books from its Fisher Library collection.

From law journals to classic poetry to long-forgotten British vase catalogues – as long as it looked old and fraying it was quickly put on student loan.

To take advantage of $27 million of government grants, Fisher Library plans to cull any books that haven’t been borrowed in the last five years to make space and to comply with building standards.

The University said that this is necessary to have enough shelf space for future collections and to provide better access.

“We got two Federal Government grants,” said Head Librarian John Shipp. “One to replace basic services: the air conditioning, the lifts – that sort of thing. The other is to actually tart up four floors of the library.”

The University already has between 650,000 and 800,000 books in storage at any one time and it only takes a day for students to access these books upon request, he said.

The same would be true for any of the half a million books planned for culling in Fisher Library, as the books would be stored, not destroyed or discarded.

But students say the book cull and the way the grants are being spent shows the University is putting commercial interests ahead of student education.

“The University spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on the corporate image through revamping their logo,” said archaeology student Ben Dharmendra.

“But they’re not prepared to further the quality of learning at the University through maintaining the collection here.”

Students also say that books are not only used for research and information, but have value just by being on the public shelves.

“The barometer for what stays and what goes is an issue,” said English literature student, Cecily Niumeitolu.

“If it’s not borrowed in five years [it] doesn’t mean it’s not used on the shelves,” she said.

Event organiser, Jo Ball agrees. She said historical issues can become relevant again and old books can’t be removed for that reason.

“Certain issues gain importance at different times and five years is really no gauge of when an issue has become expired,” she said.

Despite having no plans to stop the cull, Mr Shipp said the enthusiasm and the number of people at the read-in was incredible.

“It’s really encouraging that people are interested,” Mr Shipp said of the turnout.

He later commented that the size of the planned café is being reconsidered and there is a chance it will be reduced in favour of maintaining study space.

The read-in was also in protest of 30 voluntary staff redundancies, which would place strain library workers who remained.

By Simon Anderson