Endless Possibilities:
The Library of the Future
Close your eyes and picture a library. Now, picture our library. The Angus L. Macdonald. Can you smell the books? Can you hear faint whispers or the snick of the lights in the stacks, flicking on as you walk past? Are you remembering long nights fueled by coffee and the fear of failing the next morning’s exam – or has your mind wandered to a sneaky kiss deep in the Dewey decimals?
The only constant is change: the university’s first library, completed in 1917 when StFX enrolled about 135 students, still stands on the gentle curve where St. Ninian meets West Street. It’s part of the Coady Institute now and the library’s been converted into sunny classrooms. The Angus L. Macdonald Library, named for the former Nova Scotia premier and alumnus of StFX who’d been instrumental in creating the university’s Celtic studies program, was opened by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson on the 17th of July, 1965. The four-storey brick building could accommodate 500 students and nearly 200,000 books, and its main reading room, the “Hall of the Clans,” paid homage to the early Celtic settlers of this region.
An undated photo from the famed Hall of Clans
The library has long served as the university’s hub of research. Here, students and faculty alike engaged deeply with texts and sought enlightenment in their pages, guided by knowledgeable librarians who provided both academic and pastoral care. Soon, though, the Angus L. proved too small for the university’s requirements; thankfully, the addition of Richard Chater Hall in 1986 doubled the square footage of the library.
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Construction begins in 1986 to make way for Richard Chater Hall | An undated photo from the famed Hall of Clans
In as much as the library and its expansive holdings connected StFX researchers with the broader world in the second half of the last century, the advent of the internet changed everything – not just for StFX but for libraries everywhere. Most of us will remember the laborious process of searching for exactly the right journal article to support our essay’s thesis: talking with a librarian, searching the stacks, perusing tables of contents and abstracts, copying out – by hand! – the perfect quotation, triple-checking the citation to make sure our bibliography would be correct.
Now? From anywhere, we can call up powerful search engines that give us access to millions of scholarly articles in split seconds. We copy and paste without ever touching a pencil. It is clear that the hastening of the research process has its distinct advantages, the most significant of which to StFX is that it allows top-quality researchers to choose small universities in small towns, rather than confining them to massive institutions with unimaginably large library resources.
But where does that leave the library? What is a library, if not a place that holds books and journals?
Universities everywhere have been grappling with this dilemma for more than two decades. In the case of public libraries, the existential question has not tolled a death knell; rather, it has opened a new world of ways in which libraries can serve their communities. Tax help. Communal kitchens. Cultural workshops. Story time for children. Art – both creating and displaying. Public librarians’ imaginations seem limitless, as they view the library as the conduit for so many important social services.
"A university library may seem different. It is, after all, supposed to be a serious place. A place to learn and to study and to be quiet."
The Angus L Macdonald has serviced thousands of students over the years.
A university library may seem different. It is, after all, supposed to be a serious place. A place to learn and to study and to be quiet. Perhaps, though, it is not the university library that must change but rather, our understanding of what the university library is must shift.
Recently, University Library Carolyn Delorey gave the xaverian an attic-to-archives tour of the Angus L. We visited Laurinda and Lorena in Special Collections; walked the stacks; chatted with Sam and Grace up on the office level; checked out the Tramble Centre for Accessible Learning and Student Success Centre; and tried not to disturb the hundreds of students hunkered down in every available chair.
The ways in which our students use the library are different now. There are more laptops and fewer open books. But the students are there. They are in the Hall of the Clans, sitting among the portraits of the university’s founders – only now, they’re more desperate for an outlet than for the right journal.
The morning after the tour, campus inboxes pinged with a message to the StFX community from Grace, the diversity, outreach, and engagement librarian. Would any students like to have their plants looked after over the summer months? she wondered, introducing the new Plant Summer Camp. The e-mail instructed students to simply scan a QR code for each plant and drop them off at the library, where they’ll be minded until students return in September.
The Angus L. Macdonald is not the same library that it was in 1965, or 1986, or even 2005. And that’s a good thing.
EDIITOR’S NOTE: Alumni – what's your favourite memory of the Angus L. Macdonald Library? Send photos and anecdotes to kedwards@stfx.ca
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StFX is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw People.