Library NOT Heart of University, Survey Shows

Recently released data from a wide-ranging study confirmed this week what university administrators nationwide have always suspected and librarians always feared. “For decades we’ve all been force-fed clichés about how important the library is and that a university is nothing but a ‘library surrounded by other buildings,’ but this report by the National Center for University Priorities (NCUP) debunks all that,” proclaimed Guy Rothschild, President of Wilburn University, at his fall convocation.

The NCUP’s report drew heavily on quantitative and qualitative survey results from over 50,000 students nationwide and concluded that university libraries are irrelevant to today’s student-customers, since everything is already free on Jackpot (the new search engine that offers random payouts to registered searchers) anyway. In fact, students’ top three uses for campus libraries, the survey found, were sleep, sex, and the manufacture of crystal meth. Rothschild spent much of the remaining convocation quoting excerpts from the executive summary of the lengthy report he had received that morning, ending with the report’s take on the familiar anatomical analogy. “The library is really more like the gall bladder of the university—nice to have, but not vital to its well-being.”

The convocation and attendant 85% cuts to Wilburn library’s base budget have thus far met with vehement blowback from librarians and allied support staff but eerie silence from library administrators. “How ironic that a graduate of Supercilious Private University, an institution renowned for its world-class library, would now effectively promote the abolition of Wilburn’s library so he and his fellow suits could pursue their own pet agendas! He would never stand for this crap if it was happening at his alma mater,” growled Marcia McIntyre, head of reference services.

Wilburn faculty have voiced displeasure with Rothschild as well. “What does he mean ‘if [Jackpot] is good enough for our students, it’s good enough for faculty’?” gasped Wolf Cheney, professor of English literature. “Every faculty member here knows students’ papers are already just swaths of text cut and pasted from shit sites they found on Jackpot strung together with their own pathetic run-on sentences. Faculty apathy and grade inflation are the only things keeping students’ GPAs and campus retention from plummeting through the floor and our funding from going with them. Without a library for faculty at least to conduct their research all bets are off!”

The Library Association of North America (LANA) has issued a terse response to both the NCUP’s report and developments at Wilburn: “Looks like the party’s over.”