Special Libraries at Berkeley: Going! Going! Gone?

UC-Berkeley has a swimming scandal, problems in funding its athletics programs, and now a library issue. From CalMatters:

Arguably more than housing and other issues that typically attract more attention, the latest battle at UC Berkeley threatens the heart of the university: its libraries. Distressingly, the university says it wants to close three libraries, including its anthropology library, because it says it can’t find the money out of its $3.1 billion budget to keep them open. 

It may not seem like much amid all the challenges facing higher education. Yet the fate of the anthropology library and its nearly 45,000 volumes are at the forefront of a planned transformation of the entire library system at the oldest public university in the UC system. It is only one of the three libraries in the United States dedicated to the discipline, and the only one in California. The others are at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. 

UC Berkeley intends to shrink the number of libraries from 23 to 10 “hub” libraries, and seven “satellite” libraries, the latter with very limited hours, and without a librarian in attendance. Others will be by appointment only. The mathematics statistics library and the physics-astronomy library would also shutter under the so-called long-term space plan. Some of the books will be transferred to the main library, but others will be sent to its off-site “shelving facility” in Richmond, miles from the campus, where another 48,000 anthropology volumes are stored. The changes, at least in part, reflect a movement taking place throughout higher education in response to changing reading habits. Students increasingly are using libraries not so much for their books but more as study halls. 

But university librarians say the main reason for the planned closures is a budgetary one. They say that the library system has 40% fewer employees than it did two decades ago, even as enrollment increased by roughly 12,000 students. It is not, says university librarian Jeff Mackie-Mason, “a result of judging any discipline as less important than any other.” ...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/03/university-berkeley-anthropology-library-closure/.

One wonders, when it comes to the anthropology library, whether the decision is based in some way on the bad PR UC-Berkeley has received for retention of Native American artifacts and remains. See, for example, a recent article from EdSource: "Bones used in UC Berkeley anthropology classes likely taken from Native American graves":

https://edsource.org/updates/bones-used-in-uc-berkeley-anthropology-classes-likely-taken-from-native-american-graves.

The article is more nuanced than the headline suggests, since some of the bones are extremely old - thousands of years - and cannot easily be connected to any particular tribal group. But the headline is definitely bad PR and puts the field of anthropology at Berkeley in a bad light. On the other hand, PR issues would not seem to play a role regarding math and physics-astronomy.

See also https://www.propublica.org/article/berkeley-professor-taught-suspected-native-american-remains-repatriation.