CASE:  SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE IN NIIGATA
(JAPAN) 

Based on an interview with librarian Catherine Collins [Collins]

The campus of  Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in Niigata (SIUC-N) is designed to be a two-year introduction to an English language, American style college. Students who intend to study at SIUC in Illinois adapt to the language, teaching styles and curriculum they will find in the U.S. when they transfer after second year.

The campus opened in 1988. Until 1991, the Niigata campus library collection was determined by the undergraduate library in Carbondale. The university decided this wasn’t working, and that they needed a librarian in Niigata making collection choices and relaunching the library so that it responded directly to the real needs of students.

Interior of the Niigata campus library
Courtesy of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in Niigata

When Catherine Collins was hired she assured her employer that “I could take over selection, budget and organization,” she recalls at an interview in Vancouver. She traveled to Japan for a three-year stay.

Collins had done no pre-planning for how to develop the collection of a two-year undergraduate college.  “I wanted to see what they had and what condition they [the books] were in, and what I thought they needed.”

An American librarian already employed in the Niigata library recommended Collins use Books for College Libraries, a core collection catalog.  She never gave it a glance, although she did look into The Reader’s Advisor for inspiration: most of its titles were out of print.

“I found the collection pathetic,” she says. “For example, there were three copies of volume one of the Encyclopedia of Paranormal Psychology and no volume two. There were two indexes to poetry and no poetry collection.” There were many books on psychology and religion, but no economics and no anthropology.

She spent the first few months cleaning up the OPAC. Until then, all the cataloguing had been done in the U.S.  Collins cancelled that contract and undertook all the cataloguing herself for her entire three-year stay in Japan.

By recataloguing the library, “I got to know the collection intimately and got to know the school and the users.” She had an annual budget of US$80,000 guaranteed over three years. By the time she left, Collins had increased the book collection from “between 7 and 10,000” books to 30,000.

“After I sorted out the OPAC, I went on a massive book-buying venture.” She used Baker and Taylor for her book supplier. She used Japanese firms for items not available otherwise, such as American movies closed-captioned with English text.

She purchased 20 journal subscriptions for US$7,000 and, in addition to books that supported curriculum, bought some novels, cookbooks, and how-to-invest-your-money guides.

When the subjecs to be taught the following year were announced, she made sure the library had 11 new books on the subject.

Half the classes were intensive English classes, but the library held no young-adult level materials. “So I did a quick study on what material is available for young adults,” says Collins. “And back in ’94 there was no Internet.” So she mostly used the reviews in Library Journal, Time, Newsweek, and The Reader’s Advisor.

As a gesture to the town that built and owns the college, Collins decided to make her library available, free of charge, to the citizens of the town of Nakajo.

Aerial View of the SIUC Niigata Campus
Courtesy of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in Niigata

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