By Bob Morgan
In March I was notified by the McHenry University Library in a boiler plate letter that the UCSC Friends of the Library lending program would be eliminated starting June 1.
I’ve been a UCSC Friend since 2014 after learning of the community borrowing program through the Santa Cruz Public Library. The decision to eliminate UCSC Friends of the Library marks McHenry with a unique distinction: it’s now the only library among all other UCs that does not allow a member of the public to borrow a book from its collection.
This short-sighted decision in the service of budget cuts, I suspect, further severs connections between UCSC and our community, contracting our shared experiences and reinforcing the distance between “us” and “them.” Access to McHenry’s collection has been around at least since a 1993 statement from the UC Office of the President affirmed UC Libraries’ responsibility to offer university resources to California residents — we support UCs after all, just as our taxes support CSUs and community colleges; both of those institutions continue their community borrowing programs.
Is this a big deal? The evidence is clear: McHenry is now an outlier in the UC Library system.
McHenry’s ties with the public promote a healthy community — we all need to cultivate good relations, especially today, and bringing people together rather than pushing them away benefits the university and us. Why would McHenry administrators make a unilateral decision that erodes community fellowship? Why would they choose to silo, to look inward and step away? Budget constraints are an easy rationale, and the Friends program is most likely low hanging fruit; but the closure is a cold reminder that the university chooses to slight the community it calls home.
Residents still have access to McHenry’s computers and extensive databases and can download materials. We can visit the rotating Grateful Dead exhibit on the main floor and watch and listen to Jerry Garcia jam projected through an LED monitor in a room set up with church pews, the iconic skeleton illuminated behind a faux window. I imagine most readers don’t know these services exist — McHenry’s tin ear has been in the making for some time. Now its tone-deaf state is complete.
In the mid-1990s I witnessed the Czech people rebuilding a civil society after decades of Russian abuse. The transition to democracy was fraught with suspicion, and the Czechs’ memory of democratic institutions had been erased. It’s an extreme analogy, yet, when UCSC withdraws from us, when McHenry shuts down a public program without any dialogue or participatory engagement, that action lessens everyone and subverts democracy. The decision to shutter the Friends of the Library program shows indifference, a choice which diminishes us, one of retreat not progress toward a stronger mutual understanding.
If that retreat matters to you, write our UCSC graduate elected representatives and tell them so — state Sen. John Laird, john.laird@sen.ca.gov; and county Supervisor Justin Cummings, justin.cummings@santacruzcounty.us. Or write UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive, chancellor@ucsc.edu; University Librarian Elizabeth Cowell, mcowell@ucsc.edu; or Campus Provost Lori Kletzer, cpevc@ucsc.edu.
Bob Morgan is a resident of Santa Cruz.
