Texan Mosaic

Editor’s note: The authors for this story are six students from the COMM 2311 News Writing Lubbock section. 
They wrote this story as a group during class and tackled tough areas such as how to write a
headline and lead, what direct versus indirect quotes to use, how to organize, and then how to
end the story.   Students include: Brittany Alvarado, Abygail Elizondo, Joshua Medina,
Ashlynn Obannion, Christian Smith, and Daphne Strieder. The Levelland library photos that
illustrate this story were taken by students in COMM 1316 News Photography 1. Name credits
appear on the photos.

It might look like the world’s smallest library. But looks can be deceiving.

Just ask Tracey Pineda, the librarian at the Lubbock Downtown Center. She says there are hundreds of thousands of digital library materials available that are “hidden in plain sight.”

The whole digital collection includes everything from electronic books  to magazines, journals, and streaming videos, she says.

So how do you find them?  On the computer.

Instead of turning pages, students are often now swiping screens in order to access the library materials they need.

The place to start, Pineda says, is the SPC library main webpage.

“There are different ways to get to different resources,” Pineda says.  “We have one big search box so people don’t have to know how to do any specific style of searching.”

The big search box appears as soon as someone clicks on the library site.

Once a student types in keywords, an author, or a title, Pineda says a big list of results “of all sorts” should appear.  

“E-books, catalog records for print books, journal articles, magazine articles, news,” she says.  “Maybe there’ll be a little video in there.”

Not every single digital collection the library has will be included in a general search, Pineda says, but the biggest and most general collections are.  She also says the library allows students to access books on its site that might otherwise require a subscription. 

One of the biggest benefits of this digital shift, Pineda says, is library materials are available 24/7.

“So, your library really goes wherever you go,” she says.  “You know you have access to this anywhere.”

The Lubbock Downtown Center library is not the only SPC campus following the digital library collection trend.  The Levelland campus is too.  

According to the director of the SPC Levelland library, Nathan Ragland, the Levelland campus library removed approximately 60,000 print books and journals from its collection a little at a time over the course of the past year. He says the average age of those print books was older than 40 years, and more than 80% of them were never checked out once in their entire time at SPC.

“We have replaced the 60,000 print books with 250,000 e-books,” he says, “which can be accessed instantly from any location.”

Why is this digital shift happening in library collections?  To put it simply, Ragland says, the demand for digital resources is extremely high.  But the demand for print books has been declining year after year for the last decade.

“To put it in context,” Ragland says, “for every print book that has been checked out since 2018, roughly 150 digital resources are used.”

SPC is just keeping up with a digital library trend that appears to be going on with academic libraries everywhere.  A quick Google search proves it.

In February, 2018, the Association of College & Research Libraries, which is a division of the American Library Association, included a description of its upcoming virtual discussion called “When is a Library No Longer a Library?  The Future of All-Digital Academic Libraries”.  In that description, the ACRL author wrote, “Electronic journals and e-books now dominate library acquisition budgets and the library of the future may soon have only digital resources.” 

Besides the convenience of 24/7 materials access, what are other reasons for this digital trend?  Some of it probably comes down to money.

According to Ragland, digital resources have a much greater quantity available at reasonable prices.

“According to our latest figures,” Ragland says, “it costs the SPC Libraries $83.66 for each time a print book is checked out.  Digital resources, however, costs only $1.49.”

So where did the 60,000 print books that used to be in the Levelland Library go?  Ragland says they were sent to an organization that finds new homes for useful books and recycles outdated and broken ones.

At the start of this fall semester, there was a big empty space on the second floor where shelves used to be.

Ragland says the empty space is earmarked to become a “reading nook” in semesters to come.  That fits into the overall “makeover”  the Levelland campus library finished in 2022.  At the time, the former library director explained for the Texan Mosaic how the second floor was redesigned to offer more study space with quieter rooms and nooks.

Back at the Lubbock Downtown Center, Library Technical Assistant Juanita Yanez says she welcomes questions about books or anything else.

“Don’t be afraid to ask,” Yanez says.  “Just, a book, or whatever.  I’ve been at this for 25 years plus.  And it’s not just the library, it’s information.  We’re here to help you guys.”

And if you ask where all the books are at the Lubbock Downtown Center Library, Pineda says she’d be happy to show you.

“It’s the cliché ‘out of sight out of mind’,” Pineda says.  “Students don’t see it. They see what they are used to seeing.  And, so, they don’t know that they have all these resources.  The word about this needs to be spread as well.”