Librarian Ammie Long will be dismissed when her contract expires in June. (Courtesy of Eastern Nazarene College)
Recently, the school made the decision to release Ammie Long from the librarian staff. Long was hired August 15, 2016, and is already being released at the end of her contract, leaving the library with only two full-time librarians.
When asked about how things were going in the library, Amy Hwang, Director of Library Services and one of the two librarians left, shed some light on the recent decision. “After consulting with NEASC, which is an accrediting body, and a consultant who has been looking at the college and the budget as a whole, the school thinks we have too many librarians, which is so not true,” Hwang said.
With only two full-time librarians, Hwang hinted that the library may not be able to maintain all of the current hours it maintains. As the system runs currently, “The students can keep it open some of the time, however we will be closed more especially during breaks, and when students won’t be around. Even when you guys are on Spring Break we maintain some hours because of the adult studies and graduate students, but we will be doing less of that.”
Because the school consultant has made the choice to cut a full-time employee, the concern of student workers losing their jobs arose in the midst of the conversation, but Hwang has no concern with the security of student-worker positions in the library.
Hwang discussed the difficulties of the recent budget cuts, saying that “with the loss of one librarian this will also affect the librarians who remain because there are less of us to help with reference questions and teaching classes and doing things that librarians are trained to do.” To make the situation more difficult, Hwang estimated that this would be “just a drop in the bucket” when it came to helping ENC step out of its financial issues.
Long’s last day will be June 30, 2017.