Beginning next semester, the Research Desk at the Davis Family Library will be terminated as part of a broader restructuring of the Library’s Research, Instruction and Data Services (RI&D) department to adapt to student needs and budget constraints. The RI&D team will instead focus on individual consultation appointments to support student research.
According to Alyssa Wright, Director of RI&D, the research desk is rarely approached during its open hours.
“[The numbers] boil down to less than one question per hour for the hours that were staffed,” Wright wrote in a statement, citing RI&D data. Of those questions, only a small portion were research-related. “It’s not an efficient use of resources.”
In recent years, the library has struggled to keep the research desk sufficiently staffed.
“[The Research Desk’s] position was always designed to be temporary,” Write wrote. “Many academic libraries closed their desks or consolidated service desks in the last 10 years due to a decline in traffic.”
RI&D will focus on serving students through individual scheduled research consults, class-based research help clinics and librarian office hours at spaces like the Quantitative Center. The “Q-Center” opened to provide STEM tutoring assistance as the Armstrong Science Library closed last winter.
Wright noted that the library’s outreach capacity has diminished in recent years due to vacancies. The team is currently strained by high needs from departments like Economics and Political Science, according to RI&D data. They plan to hire a new research librarian specializing in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the next semester, which will ideally allow RI&D to rebuild connections with academic departments and expand its visibility among students.
The new hiring comes as the department reels with the departure of many full-time librarians in the years following the height of the Covid-19. Until now, only three of those seven positions have been filled, while two were entirely eliminated. One was eliminated during Covid-19 pandemic restrictions and another earlier this year due to budget cuts, according to Wright.
Adjusting to these constraints, RI&D will see a shift from their current liaison model to an experimental team model. Instead of a librarian being assigned to a set of departments, there will be three teams — Humanities, STEM and Arts — of librarians. Some will work on multiple teams.
“This helps distribute the workload across fewer people and helps us provide more consistent services when librarian staffing changes,” Wright explained.
Associate Professor of Economics Tanya Byker frequently integrates RI&D support into courses such as Regression Analysis. Julia Deen, the Humanities & Social Sciences and Data Services librarian, is listed on the syllabus as an available resource which helps offload the pressure put on professors.
“In Regression Analysis, I am going to have probably between 70 and 80 students, and they’re doing research projects,” Byker said. “I could give them more time helping with the software if I could hand off a little bit of the data advising to someone at the library.”
For students, individualized consultations are helpful. Alpana Bakshi ’26, who consulted with Deen over the summer for a research project, said the one-on-one approach was invaluable.
“[Deen] was really thorough in trying to find different things that might help,” Bakshi said. “When it comes to research, professors are very knowledgeable on where to look and recommending specific papers, but I found that [research librarians are] for getting into the nitty gritty and getting into the weeds.”
Bakshi added that Deen’s follow-up emails and continued accessibility shaped her positive experience. Bakshi is now working with Deen on two additional research projects this semester.
“Sometimes I feel like [the research services] is untapped,” Bakshi said. “I don't know any of my peers who have gone to Julia or even the library for data help.”
According to a survey conducted by Middlebury professors between December 2024 and February 2025, over 80% of Middlebury students use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their coursework. With the rise of student AI use, Wright argued that research librarians have become even more essential. Even with discipline-specific AI tools, she noted that students still need guidance from a professional to help them interpret, navigate, and apply those tools responsibly and correctly.
“I think [AI] particularly helps researchers who already understand how academic research works,” Wright explained. “For students that don't have that understanding, they're less able to analyze what the AI tool is throwing back at them.”
Byker echoed this view. “I've been steeped in [data] literature, so I can ask AI a question that's really knowledgeable, […] but [AI] would have been of no use to me if I hadn't known any literature,” Byker said.
“It’s comforting to know that it’s a person that has gone and looked at the data and [is able to make] more complex connections that can’t be done by AI right now,” Bakshi said.
