Campus Planners Address Rumors Regarding Library Books

Loyola’s new Campus Plan identified the need for several new construction projects on campus. While Cudahy Library is one potential place that could be renovated to accommodate campus resources, no definite plans exist for any alterations to the library, according to Provost and Chief Academic Officer Douglas Woods. 

One certainty of the Campus Plan is the eventual demolition of the Sullivan Center and of Flanner Hall, The Phoenix reported.

The Campus Plan states the Sullivan Center’s location on the edge of campus is suboptimal considering the student services it provides. Demolition of the building will allow for student resources to be better centralized on campus.

The removal of the Sullivan Center raises the question of where to relocate its many offices, such as the Student Success Center, according to Vice President for Facilities and Campus Management Kana Henning.

History Professor Robert Bucholz said he heard rumors of the new Student Success Center being placed in Cudahy Library, and library books being removed and placed in a storage facility to make room for the Success Center. 

An article written by an undergraduate student on the website of “Save Our Sources!” a campaign led by university faculty to prevent the removal of library materials, last updated in February, claims all of the Sullivan Center’s offices will be placed in the Cudahy Library. 

The article also claims Loyola’s administration will remove all the books from the basement of the Sullivan Center and an entire floor’s worth of books from Cudahy.

History professor Robert Bucholz said he believes the removal of library books would undermine the university’s educational mission.

“I think anything that has the potential to hurt the library has the potential to hurt our national reputation and our brand, which is a kind of Jesuit rigor, rooted in understanding of the humanities,” Bucholz said.

Bucholz said he heard rumors of new offices replacing Cudahy’s library books. When preparing for the spring semester, Bucholz said he discovered the Bibliography of British and Irish History, a library database he and his students use for his British history class, had been deleted from the list of library databases, which brought the rumors to his attention.

When he inquired about the reason for the database cut, Bucholz said he was told by the library the database wasn’t getting enough traffic, which didn’t make sense to him since his HIST 318B class required students to extensively use the database for projects. This led Bucholz to believe it was cut as part of a larger initiative.

It’s possible space in the Cudahy Library may be used for another building or for student services, according to Woods. However, since several other building sites are still under exploration and assessment, Woods said it’s far too early to be concerned about the removal of library books, due to the lack of definite plans. 

While the Cudahy Library is one potential building under consideration for placing new developments or resources, it isn’t the only location. 

The Campus Plan indicates a new Student Success Center, Sciences Building and Nursing and Health Sciences Building are all necessary to best serve students’ educational needs.

Woods said the Facilities Department is working with university architects and various department leaders to weigh options of potential sites to place these three buildings.

“The purpose of the Campus Plan was to help us identify a set of guiding principles through which we were going to make decisions, to help us do a needs assessment to understand the comprehensive, full scope of our needs across the institution,” Vice President for Facilities and Campus Management Kana Henning said. “We weren’t making singular project by project decisions without the full context of our entire needs across the institution.”

The Facilities Department collected data from student enrollment, building surveys and building adequacy reports and used the data to brainstorm options for sites to place the various buildings they deemed necessary for student success, according to the Campus Plan website.

Henning said many sites are being considered for the new buildings outlined by the Campus Plan, including the Sullivan Center, the newly demolished Centennial Forum site, Flanner Hall’s current location and several open spaces along North Kenmore and North Winthrop Avenues. 

The Facilities Department is now conducting assessments of the sites proposed by the Campus Plan to determine which sites would best accommodate each new building, according to Henning.

“We can’t look at every project in isolation,” Henning said. “It has to be looked at in the big picture of the entire comprehensive plan.”

The interconnected nature of the changes outlined by the Campus Plan complicates the decisions the Facilities Department must make, according to Henning. The Facilities Department has not made any final statements on the placement of buildings or the fate of the library.