UT’s Libraries

A trip into literature

This is a photo of Robert B. Rowling Hall on the UT campus. The photo was taken around 2 p.m. on Monday, October 11. The student, Cole F.(AHS Freshman) is exploring the UT campus for fun.

Whats been going on at the UT libraries over the past couple of years?

When you walk around the University of Texas campus, there’s a hidden treasure that is often overlooked. You walk around and look for an unusual, rectangular-looking building. As you start to walk towards this building, you see things that you didn’t notice at first. You see beautiful paintings in the window, enticing you to explore deeper. You’ve stumbled onto one of UT’s famous libraries,w the Ransom Center.

The UT libraries aren’t talked about enough. There are lots of librarians that have interesting stories about their work that they want to share. Some of these librarians explained their day-to-day occurrences and what made them want to become a librarian. Along with this, the libraries have been changing a lot over the past couple years.

John Kuhn works at the Ransom Center, where he specializes in collecting works from many different authors. He believes the Ransom Center and the University of Texas are special places.

Photo courtesy from Jim Kuhn, at the HarryRansom center. Walking around the UT campus, photographer Jim Kuhn takes a photo of the Harry Ransom center during the middle of the day around 1p.m. A still photo portraying the archaic Ransom center in its best beauty.

The Ransom Center

“I’d say the thing that distinguishes the Ransom Center the most is the collections,”John Kuhn said. “There’s a lot of living creative artists whose work is held at the Ransom Center, from all different kinds of walks of life and types of creative activity. We’ve got people who write novels, people write poetry, people who are actors and producers of plays and movies. We’ve got the collections of photographers, and fine artists.”

Doug Barnett, the Chief of Staff for the Vice Provost at UT, oversees the university’s many libraries. It is one of the largest university libraries in the country and caters to many different student and faculty needs. It is a reflection of the university. “UT has a really incredible ability to be very large, but finds ways to pay attention to each person individually, in a really positive way,” Barnett said.

Barnett even talks about his own experience at UT. He had gone there for college and knows the personal experience first hand.

“I’ve been there for a long time,” Barnett said. “I went there as a student, and I’ve been there ever since. And I’ve seen them make a lot of changes over the years to keep trying to find ways to help each student have an individual experience.”

Margaret Schlankely works at both the Dolph Briscoe Center for American literature and the UT library as a librarian. She said there were many different factors that made UT library collections a lot different than other libraries. She also talked about what her favorite collection was, and why it’s her favorite collection.

“I think that the letters and the materials and the James Farmer collections are things that I go to a lot, but also the UT archive,” Schlankey said. “That has stuff about when they integrated UT, and the issues that they had, and the reluctance that the university had to integrate,”

Those aren’t the only things that make the UT libraries special. Schlankey has worked there as a librarian for a very long time and knows each part of the The book was better, Austin Edition | 23

Photo courtesy of Dolph Briscoe Center This is a photo taken of the Briscoe center. It showis one of their many exhibits throug the museun.

Briscoe Center. She also explained how the Briscoe Center had lots of special collections.

“I think the thing that differentiates us is our focus, and we have a very broad focus,” Schlankey said. “I mean it’s all history, but we have materials on Texas, and the American South, we have materials on photojournalism news media, we have stuff on the oil industry. These are all things that dovetail together. We cast a wide net, but it’s all US History. It’s all related to US History. That’s what makes us [special].”

Kuhn talks about how the libraries are starting to be utilized more and more. Along with this, he brings up the fact that collections and books are starting to get digitized and how that’s been The book was better, Austin Edition | 24

affecting the Ransom Center.

“UT has a really strong library system,” Kuhn said. “One thing that is true of UT as well as other academic libraries, is that the numbers of circulation of physical materials are going down. But the number of uses of electronically available resources is going up. That’s for the general libraries. For the Special Collections

libraries, the use of our digital collections is only going up and up and up.”

Kuhn also talks about how the number of students visiting and taking classes at the Ransom Center have been increasing.

“We’re trying hard to get more and more students into our classrooms at the Harry Ransom Center,” Kuhn said. “For four or five years, recently, the number of students that were coming into our classrooms kept going up, it finally plateaued at around 8,000 students.”

While the number of students has been slowly going up, the COVID pandemic had a big impact on UT. Not only did the libraries get shut down, but the whole campus was mostly closed down for a couple of months. Kuhn talked about how the libraries were affected during this time.

“[During COVID] we gave away a whole lot of digital images,” Kuhn said. “Ordinarily, we charge for them, but because we were closed and couldn’t provide full service, we were giving them away.”

Schlankey also talks about how COVID affected the Briscoe Center, another library on UT campus. These were two separate libraries, so COVID had a significant and special effect on each of them as libraries.

“We pivoted fast, and people had to start working from home, but we got [a lot of] people set up with [other] projects,” Schlankey said. “A lot of people started working on getting resources ready for that. We kept doing references, we started doing remote references. If we had electronic materials that could answer a question, then we did that.”

This wasn’t the only effect that COVID had on the Briscoe Center, Schlankey said. She also talked about what she and her coworkers had to do when they worked online and in person for the library. She explained how they needed to form cohorts so that there would only be a set amount of people in the building.

“We developed cohorts,” Schlankey said. “[We] had cohorts, [where] max [6 people] would be in the building. We’ve got a big building and we developed a sign-in system. We are all still wearing masks in our building. So I think we adapted really, really well.”

Not only did the libraries have to adapt, but the college did too, Barnett explains.

“The university went from being concerned about COVID to going completely online in about a month,” Barnett said. “We had to really scramble and work hard to figure out how to do that. And it caused us to shift a lot of what our work was doing. We sent all of our staff home. A lot of things that we used to do [couldn’t be done].” Kuhn explained why it’s so important to work in person at a library, especially at one of the UT libraries.

“It’s not the work that we would have expected to do because really, at a library, like the Ransom Center, you have to work with the physical objects.” Kuhn said

In addition, Kuhn brought up the fact that he thought that the Ransom Center, and most libraries at UT are undervalued for what they really are.

“One of the things about the Ransom Center is that it’s world famous, but it’s, in fact, one small piece of UT Austin,” Kuhn said. “One of the goals that I would have, would be that every UT student finds a reason to come to the Ransom Center. Many of them don’t know anything about it, but there are [around] 50,000 students. If every single student came through the Ransom Center at least once during their time at UT, that would be great.”

There is lots happening on the UT campus. In fact, if you check the UT calendar right now, you can find many different events happening on the website such as band performances or live football and basketball games. But when you go to visit UT, make sure to check out its libraries. You’ll find some incredible and unique treasures and meet some interesting librarians.