The Library Is the Beating Heart of Reed College

President Bilger and Reed library leaders discuss the impact of the campus hub.

When one thinks of the library at Reed College, many feelings may surface: the joy of falling in love with a new author, the stress of time spent at a thesis desk, the excitement of learning together with classmates who became fast friends. One feeling that the librarians hope visitors take away with them is the sense of being cared for.

“We’re looking at students in a holistic way, and much like a lot of other places on campus, we have a culture of care in the library, and so we’re looking at the students as whole people and thinking about what other ways besides their classes do they need support around,” says Ann Matsushima Chiu, social sciences and zine librarian. “They need to grow as people. They need to get connected with the resources. They need to get connected outside of Reed and plugged in with their community. They need arts and culture and all of that.”

The library is the heart and hub of campus and a central, vibrant place that offers resources within its walls as well as an expansive sharing library with other academic libraries in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a place where students, faculty, staff, and alumni can find troves of information and also share their own findings and stories with others.

“I think it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, this is a place where rigorous scholarship is happening,’ but also it should be joyful,” says Tracy Drake, director of special collections and archives. “Your years here at Reed should also elicit joy.”

That’s an idea Reed College President Audrey Bilger supports and has expressed since her first presidential interviews at Reed: that “rigor doesn’t have to be rigid.”
The pandemic disrupted some of the joy students were able to find as the library closed for five months in 2020. Its culture was stymied during that time, and was also hindered as a large portion of the building went through seismic upgrades from December 2021 to March 2023.

“We really had a generation of students who didn’t get an opportunity to experience the library culture,” says Dena Hutto, the Norman F. Carrigg College Librarian. “So really, my marching orders for all the library staff were to get students back in the library. And the staff really delivered. In terms of the number of students in the library, using collections, participating in classes and outreach events, we are exceeding what we used to do prepandemic. I think at this point, that is exciting.”

Increased numbers of community events, such as Zine Fest and bringing alumni authors to campus, and deeper engagement with the library’s visual resources center and archives have brought more students to the library than ever. That also means there are more opportunities for patrons to build relationships with the librarians and each other.

Some of the important connections that form are between alumni and current students. That can be when a student visits the thesis tower to find previous research to build on or interactions when alumni come by to access the archives or walk the stacks as they remember their time at Reed.

“It’s almost as if alumni become mentors themselves,” says Chlöe Van Stralendorff, visual resources curator. “We talk about librarians and library staff becoming mentors to current students, but alumni also fit that role, too.” 

Mentorship continues with the materials found at the library, often with the expert guidance of librarians who ask the right questions to direct a patron to the resources they need. At the archives, documents and multimedia are housed for patrons to reference as they continue to create new knowledge to put out into the world. The archives open a window into the past that allows viewers to see the future.

“I think that what we’ve been able to do is shift the idea of the archives from this place of show-and-tell, where we’re just showing these really old documents to helping students to understand that it is a place where rigorous scholarship can happen,” Drake said.

Scholarship is also happening in the zine library, where students are able to tell their own stories and express their own lived experiences. Zines are an accessible way for folks, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, to share voices which might not otherwise be heard. The visual resources center provides specialized equipment and supplies for documenting, creating, and researching artwork. The risograph in the visual resources center is one of the pieces of equipment that patrons use to easily produce multiple copies of a zine that can be used for their own personal enjoyment or used as part of an academic endeavor.

“It’s so heartening to see even more engagement with the library because what we know in terms of helping our students succeed and thrive and feel a sense of belonging is that those relationships are critical,” Bilger says. “And our talented librarians model for them what it is to be intellectually engaged with resources and materials. The Reed library truly enriches the lives of our students.”

Tags: Academics, Books, Film, Music, Campus Life