Intellectual Nourishment / Intellectual Engagement and Libraries

Several years ago I wrote a blog post entitled Starbucks, Chocolate, and Libraries, reflecting a bit on the role that café spaces in libraries might play as a space for intellectual nourishment. Sitting in a local Starbucks today catching up on professional reading as well as working on a new article, while my car is getting repaired, I thought it appropriate to revisit the ideas of intellectual nourishment and intellectual engagement.

Two years ago, in an open session for a new Provost, a history faculty member asked the candidate for his plans for creating intellectual conversation on campus, and the candidate, unfortunately, did not have an answer. The question was a genuine request for an opportunity for the university community to be a home for intellectual dialogue; a chance for faculty colleagues to do what we want our students to do – wrestle with the ideas from the past and present, and make the world a better place. She felt the Provost’s role was more than bringing faculty together around policy, curriculum reform, and faculty governance.

While a Provost could address this issue as one of her/his priorities, it is more likely that other priorities will occupy their time and the intellectual conversation on campus will fall to the various academic colleges and academic departments. In this lacunae, libraries have an opportunity to play a major role.

In an article that I recently published, “The 21st Century Academic Library: Six Metaphors for a New Age” https://journals.tdl.org/llm/index.php/llm/article/view/7334 , “library as café” is one of the metaphors. People who know me well, and my penchant for spending time at Starbucks, may think I am proposing a model of “library as Starbucks”. While I am always intrigued to see how people use their local Starbucks (study, writing, work as an independent contractor, community activism, etc.), for me “library as Starbucks” is too limiting.

Library as café harkens back to the European coffee house tradition where the intellectuals, politicians, and business leaders of the day gathered to discuss the issues of the day: ideas were exchanged, arguments and counter-arguments given, deals made, and ideas advanced. The power of the café society was so prevalent in Europe, that it is was one of the things that the Nazis quashed as they came to power and conquered various countries. They saw this free exchange of ideas and the intelligentsia as a danger.

If you look at the grand academic and public libraries of the past you would have encountered architecture that evoked “library as temple of knowledge”. Besides the inspiring spaces, there were often inspiring quotes on the role of books and knowledge. These were meant to be a form of intellectual nourishment that would alter the reader; they were meant to inspire. As our academic libraries are transforming into more user-centered spaces, perhaps with fewer visible collections, and” inspiring quotations” it is important not to lose the role that libraries can and should play in intellectual engagement/intellectual nourishment on campus.

While I’m not suggesting you recreate New York Public Library’s Rose Reading Room or LA Public’s critically acclaimed ALOUD Lecture Series (https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/aloud-lecture-series), we can use our spaces and collections to engage, provoke, and nourish the mind of our students, staff, and faculty.

Some examples might include:

• Build and install a collection of artworks that represent the ethnic and cultural heritage of the student body. This could come from professional artists or from student artists.

• Instead of the traditional quotes on library buildings that have typically only represented the Western tradition, use some of the blank wall space in your libraries and cover them with quotes from the diversity of the world’s cultures and literatures, concentrating specifically on those that represent your students.  

• Host an annual global poetry slam during National Poetry Month with poetry readings in languages from all the languages spoken on campus.

• If your campus doesn’t do a “common read” program, consider working with student affairs, and the local public library to do so.

• Use one or more large flat screens to highlight interesting “primary source” materials from the collections that engage the campus.

• Host fun events that encourage student creativity. This might be game night or a build with Lego event with a challenge to build something that represents an event or concept. The first Lego event we did at the Colby Libraries, students were challenged to build something that represented “Revolution” as that was the campus-wide Arts and Humanities Theme for the year.

• Create a small music performance program that brings short musical events to the library. This not only provides an interesting option for students it also shows that the library recognizes the scholarship of performance. See UCLA Library’s Mindful Music in the Library https://www.library.ucla.edu/events/mindful-music-concert-series as an example.

• Create a faculty noon-time talk series that features faculty from across campus sharing their research.  Providing coffee and cookies helps to make this a great event. 

• If you have space, offer to host guest lectures that other academic colleges or groups bring to campus. This hopefully will allow more exposure to these talks with a larger audience of students and faculty across campus.

• Of course, if you don’t have a café in your library, plan for one, and then invite faculty to use the space as a venue to have conversations with their students.

     Let the intellectual nourishment begin.