Thomas Cooper Library on USC's historic campus is a sprawling, impressive piece of architecture built in 1959 that features five floors, as well as a main floor and a mezzanine. The library boasts an extensive collection of books and creative works across many genres, serving as a hub for students seeking materials for both their coursework and personal enjoyment. However, some students are not fully satisfied with library's selection.
A junior in USC’s Young Adult Literature class appreciates the variety of literature that Thomas Cooper Library carries but wishes there were more options aligned with what she is learning about in class.
“We always have an assigned reading to do about a book or a media in our syllabus. We’ve done graphic novels, we’ve done short YA novels. Right now, we’re doing 'Never Have I Ever,' the Netflix show, so it’s really just young adult media.”
The students in the Young Adult Literature class engage with a wide range of material, including "American Born Chinese" by Gene Luen Yang, "Children of Blood and Bone" by Tomi Adeyemi, "Felix Ever After" by Kacen Callender and more.
The student says when she frequents the campus library, it’s primarily to find books for her own pleasure, not for class. She concedes that while the library’s selection is well-suited to fit her personal interests, she has trouble finding obscure novels useful for her major.
“The selection [at the library] is very few to many, but I’ve gotten pretty lucky that the leisure books that I want to read are at the bottom floor in a corner somewhere," she said.
“I can get a copy of Henry Miller [at Thomas Cooper], I can get 'Tropic of Cancer', I can get 'Lolita', but I know that in some of my other classes, like my education classes, where I need a short YA novel or something like that, I know I’m not going to find it here, so I have to go to the public library for those,” she added.
Being an education major, this student wishes there were more works of literature in the library that catered to her specific concentration. She feels as though the library is dominated by classics and books centered around majors such as business or STEM.
“For me, specifically, I would love to see more children’s books. Even if it’s just a small section. Art education, education students, child psychology, things like that, there are so many other majors and colleges that can implement children’s literature. Even if there was just a small pool to choose from, it would be super beneficial.”
Dr. Tharini Viswanath is an assistant professor of children’s and young adult literature at USC and currently teaches USC's Young Adult Literature course. While society may generally place more value on perennial literature, such as older classics, Viswanath believes that children’s and young adult fiction are equally as essential.
“I think [young adult literature] is extremely important to who we become,” Viswanath said. “I think that young adult literature is extremely, extremely important because it shapes people, especially in their formative years. Literature is a reflection of the society where we are living.”
Viswanath’s young adult literature class engages with different kinds of material, including traditional novels, graphic novels and even a TV show—all of which prompt meaningful discussions about social justice issues and societal roles. Viswanath recommends both Thomas Cooper Library and the Richland County Library to her students to find material that expands on in-class learning.
“Thomas Cooper is where I send them for material like books, other stuff we’re reading, and so on. The novels, I usually send my students to the Richland County public library which has a huge selection. The other thing I must add is that the librarians at Thomas Cooper Library are very helpful. If you need something, and they don’t have access to it, they will find ways of getting you access to it.”
Brent Appling is the head of collection strategy and management at Thomas Cooper Library, and he is in charge of what comes in and goes out of the library’s physical reading material collection, as well as the library’s online resources. He echoes Viswanath’s sentiment that the library staff helps students procure reading material in whatever way they can. When choosing what books are going to be offered at the library, Appling says that Thomas Cooper takes a “holistic” approach to sift through material and decide what will ultimately be both valuable and pertinent in their collection.
“We are very patron-driven," Appling said "So that means when faculty members need stuff for research, they let us know, we get it in. Though requests are often rare from students, we obviously will get those, but we also have what are called approval plans, where things will come in automatically. So, for example, the browsing collection is a big part of that, so we'll have New York Times bestsellers come in, we’ll have somewhat YA, but mostly things we’re pretty confident are going to be popular will come in through approval.”
Appling estimates that the total amount of materials that circulate through USC's Thomas Cooper Library is roughly 2.5 million, meaning that choosing what books come in and out is not an easy task. Sharon Verba is the head of research and instruction within Thomas Cooper Library and acts as a liaison in certain subject areas, including English and languages, literatures and cultures, popular reading and children’s reading. She detailed the criteria she looks for when deciding what books to add to the collection that will aid both students and professors in both their research and pleasure:
“If we’re talking about popular books and young adult fiction and children’s books, there are a couple things. One thing is we look for award winners. One of our approval plans is to get us the award winners and the things that were nominated for awards, so we make sure we get those," Verba explained. "Sometimes we get recommendations. We ask our students, we ask our student library ambassadors, we ask other students, and if anybody wants to recommend a book, we are always happy to say, ‘Great, let’s see if we can’t get it in."
Verba estimates that around half of the students who come into Thomas Cooper are looking for texts related to their studies, while the other half are seeking out books for their own personal enjoyment. With such a wide array of needs to be met for both students and faculty, managing the collection can be difficult, but the library has several measures in place to aid this.
“We have a link on our website called ‘Suggest a Purchase’, and that’s basically a request form,” Appling said. “You put it in, my team looks at it. Very rarely are we like, ‘No, you can’t have this book.’ It has to be a pretty extreme example. If you just want a novel, we get it.”
Appling and Verba recognize that some genres may be more difficult to access than others, specifically the young adult collection, and they are looking for ways to address this.
“I think some signage that might have a QR code to it might help, I mean there are some things that we could do proactively, but our YA collection is kind of buried and it's scattered," Appling said. "We are trying to get things highlighted up here on the floor as much as possible, so we’ve got a little YA collection that I’m hoping to grow out.”
Overall, both Verba and Appling are working hard to make sure everyone’s interests are represented in the collection of materials that circulate through the library.
“We are open to suggestions," Verba said. "We are very happy to get them. You know, it's the kind of thing that we just are very happy to have people say, ‘Yes, I'm interested in more of this.’”
Ultimately, although Thomas Cooper Library’s selection of young adult literature may leave something to be desired, the staff is more than willing to take suggestions from both students and teachers alike. Below is the aforementioned link that allows students and faculty to make requests for media in Thomas Cooper Library.
