At the University of Virginia, the Chemistry Library was scheduled to close permanently at the end of 2016. Graduate students in the department expressed concerns about the closure and the faculty supported their efforts. With the Dean of Libraries and liaison librarian for chemistry both less than a year in their positions, the University of Virginia Libraries saw this as an opportunity to explore whether a new model of library could be implemented as a way of saving the branch library. This talk will describe not only the background and politics surrounding the process, but also the participatory design activities that were used to gather graduate student needs and the assessments of items within the collection to determine their new locations. Finally, lessons learned and the current fate of the branch library will be discussed.

Chemistry library as rallying point: Assessing how to save a branch library

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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