By Griffy Vigneron (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: July 3, 2013
Faced with budget cuts and reduced funding from the government, UFV has decided to close the Mission campus library for good.
Funding from the government has not been significant enough to cover all university costs, after a $42 million cut to post-secondary education over the next three years was announced in February. Departments at UFV have been required to make budget cuts and save money where they can.
Interim university librarian Patti Wilson explains that the decision didn’t come easily.
“It wasn’t an easy choice to have to make. It’s never a welcoming idea to reduce services. We’d always like to think that we were enhancing or improving services. I’m hoping that the net impact won’t be too great,” she says.
The Mission library, while used, has not been a huge hotspot for students to get materials. Of the 375 books taken out from the Mission library last year, 303 of them were requested by and transferred to Abbotsford students.
On top of that, the library was opened reduced hours on some days of the week, and was only open from September to April. The library technician, Shawna Pierce, was employed part-time.
Closing the library is set to save the university $30,000 a year from salary-related expenses.
“It’s not huge money, but they were looking [at] every piece of … every department. If you said you could save $50 on postage, $500 on postage, or whatever [they were] like ‘okay, we need that,’” Wilson explains.
Library spending falls into two big categories – paying salaries as well as the purchasing of licenses and collection items. Wilson acknowledges than library director Kim Isaac tried to reduce spending in both categories to avoid taking too much from either.
Part-time and on-call positions in the library were reduced in favour of full-time positions to meet the budget expectations. The part-time Mission library technician position was cut as part of this reduction.
Fortunately, Wilson explains, because there were some retirements in the library, Pierce didn’t lose her job as a result of the cuts.
“People were concerned about a person being laid off. We’re in a union and people don’t want to hear about their union brother and sister being laid off,” Wilson says. “We were able to absorb her here into a vacancy.”
But the loss of the Mission library and technician position was still hard.
“What I will say is that the closure came as a complete shock to me. I was not consulted beforehand. It was personally devastating and I don’t care to talk about it,” Pierce says.
The library department will still offer services to Mission students. Books can be requested and will be available for pick up with Mission office staff. The Askaway online service will still help students find information on the library website, and instructional classes will continue to be put on by library staff. An online web-conferencing service with library technicians is in the works for more in depth needs.
Wilson says they are still committed to providing Mission students with services in a less-than-ideal situation.
“It’s not perfect, that’s for sure, but we’re definitely trying to do what we can to keep good-functioning services for people over [in Mission],” she says.
