When Jennifer Yazawa, a board member of the New Mexico Japanese American Citizens League, went to what was once UNM College of Education’s Tireman Library two weeks ago, she said she was surprised to find that the library no longer existed and the NM-JACL’s materials housed there were gone.
In a letter to Richard Howell, dean of the College of Education, Yazawa said the NM-JACL began developing its collection of educational materials pertaining to civil and human rights for Asian-Americans in 1985. The league has invested hundreds of dollars to build the resource library over the years, she said.
“I was aghast when I discovered the space that Tireman Library once occupied was completely empty and unused,” Yazawa said.
Yazawa said teachers at both UNM and Albuquerque Public Schools, as well as NM-JACL’s members used the collections of books.
“Chapter members have used the materials for their reading, viewing, and listening pleasure as well as for the presentations they are frequently asked to make,” she said. “The key to the materials being useful was public access, and Tireman provided that.”
The College of Education closed Tireman Library on July 30, 2010, with the intent of “repurposing some space,” Zimmerman Library spokeswoman Nancy Dennis said.
Howell was not available for comment, and the college’s academic operations officer, Diane Gwinn, referred the Daily Lobo to a FAQ page on Zimmerman’s website.
The FAQ page said some materials from Tireman were moved to Zimmerman, including children’s and young adults’ literature collections and Native American literature collections. Other materials stayed in the College of Education.
“The long-term goal is to consolidate all of the children’s- and young adult-level materials currently spread among four libraries into a single collection in a dedicated space,” the website said.
“Plans are to provide comfortable study space near the collection.”
Yazawa said no one informed the NM-JACL that Tireman would be closing or that their collections would be moved. She said nobody at the College of Education could tell her where the collection went.
“I was told that some was given away, some was trashed and some were saved, possibly at Zimmerman Library,” she said.
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Dennis said she doesn’t know what happened to some of collections, including the NM-JACL’s collection.
“I’m not real sure what they did with some of them,” she said.
“It’s not a collection I’m familiar with, but if it was part of the children’s literature collection it would have come over.”
