Stella Bentley says Kansas University has “one of the finest libraries in the country.”

But Bentley, who started Monday as KU’s new dean of libraries, is formulating plans to make it better.

One of the most immediate needs, she said, is space. The eight libraries are bursting at the seams with 3.6 million volumes and 27,000 periodicals.

“There are major space issues,” she said. “We’re going to work over the next couple of years to find some other space. Sometimes books are just piled on the floor. That’s a concern for the books and the people trying to find them.”

Bentley said she wasn’t sure whether constructing a new building or securing off-site storage would be a better option for resolving the space problem.

Bentley, 58, came to KU from Auburn University in Alabama. She had been dean of libraries at the 22,000-student school since 1997.

Auburn’s three libraries have 2.2 million volumes and 19,000 periodicals. Its annual budget is $11 million, compared with $14 million at KU.

‘Not very attractive’

The KU libraries’ space crunch isn’t Bentley’s only concern. Their appearance could also use some improvement, she said.

“Watson Library needs to be refurbished,” she said. “It’s unfortunately not very attractive to walk into at this time. It has that beige carpet that’s very worn. Sooner than later we have to address those issues. The engineering library needs some work, too.”

Such face-lifts might help KU buck a national trend. More students are choosing to study elsewhere. And as more electronic resources become available, students don’t need to go to the library as often.

“A lot will depend on the discipline the students are in,” Bentley said. “If they’re in sciences and social sciences, many of the materials needed for those disciplines are available online, as long as they have a computer with Internet access. With more print-based disciplines like the humanities, we’re still disseminating that information by books.”

Maintaining print volumes while expanding digital services will be a major challenge for all libraries in the future, Bentley said.

“We need to strike a balance between the print collection and the electronic collection,” she said. “We’re kind of living in two worlds for a while.”

Accessibility is another challenge for KU’s libraries, Bentley said. As with other libraries she has overseen, KU’s libraries have few parking spaces near them.

“I’m a librarian,” Bentley said. “I don’t know that I’ll have any power to take care of that.”

Broad and specialized

Like KU, Auburn has struggled to maintain its periodical subscriptions, which are increasing in price nationwide. Bentley helped form agreements with other libraries to buy the periodicals in bulk to decrease costs.

While Auburn is a land-grant institution whose libraries focus on engineering, agriculture and veterinary medicine, Bentley said KU’s collection is more general.

“At KU, we need to support a wider breadth of subjects,” she said.

Bentley is especially impressed with the special collections at the Spencer Research Library, including the foreign language collections related to KU’s area studies programs.

“It’s the special collections that make a library,” she said. “Lots of libraries have the common books.”

Before working at Auburn, Bentley was an assistant library director for nine years at the University of California-Santa Barbara and for two years at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She also was a librarian for nine years at Indiana University.

Bentley has served as chairwoman of the Diversity Committee for the Association of Research Libraries, chairwoman of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries and director for the Southeastern Library Network.