A venti-size change at campus libraries

The words “grande” and “venti” will be heard again and again in the near future at the Cal State Long Beach library -- and they won’t be voiced by students taking introductory Italian.

They’ll come from those lining up for Starbucks coffee as part of a gastronomic and cultural revolution at college and university libraries. On campuses across California and the country, libraries are relaxing traditional bans against drink and food in reading rooms and stacks to lure students away from computer-filled dorms and off-campus Internet cafes.

A Starbucks -- with its tall, grande and venti cup sizes -- is scheduled to open in the lobby of the renovated Cal State Long Beach library in January. USC this year debuted a sandwich-serving teahouse on the ground floor of its historic Doheny Memorial Library. And Santa Clara University, Cal Poly Pomona and Fresno State are among the many schools planning cafes in library expansions or retrofits.

“We want to turn the library into a place where students want to hang out, and make the library a centerpiece of the campus the way it used to be many years ago,” said Roman Kochan, Cal State Long Beach’s library dean and a strong advocate for the Starbucks franchise, which will be run by a university group.

Even at colleges with no such immediate plans, librarians are easing or reviewing old prohibitions on sipping and nibbling. Yes, they still fear Pepsi pouring onto expensive keyboards and roaches munching pretzel crumbs in the reference room. But they also see that today’s college students have water bottles and coffee cups -- along with cellphones -- attached to their hands. And officials see greater damage when books are checked out of libraries and read during a home meal of sloppy spaghetti.

Kochan lifted many of the food and drink rules in the Cal State Long Beach library several years ago, albeit with some restrictions in rare-book and computer areas.

“Now we simply don’t worry about things unless someone orders in pizza or Kentucky Fried Chicken,” he said. “Once in a while, some student actually orders in a full Chinese dinner. We have to say no.”

The change reflects a new vision of college libraries in the Internet age. Many are no longer the hushed haven of solitary scholars. Instead, they are becoming what some librarians describe as the campus living rooms (not yet dining rooms) where groups of students huddle before computer screens for a collaborative project.

With the Internet and wireless technology making research so accessible, many students no longer feel compelled to come to libraries, noted Harold B. Schleifer, Cal Poly Pomona’s dean of the university library.

“So libraries should provide the amenities that will make people want to come here,” he said.

In a formerly neglected part of USC’s Doheny library, a $1-million gift from philanthropists Soraya and Younes Nazarian helped create an indoor and outdoor snacking and study area designed to match the building’s 1930s Romanesque architecture. A tea, coffee and sandwich shop known as LiteraTea is just off a brick-walled courtyard with tables, chairs and wireless Internet service.

Since the cafe opened in March, professors have taken to meeting with students there over teapots and bagels.

“It’s the Borders, Barnes & Noble model,” said Marje Schuetze-Coburn, USC’s dean of libraries.

It seemed to work for USC freshman Cameron Ernst, of Wichita, Kan., who was studying in the courtyard over breakfast recently.

“It’s a really nice area to sit and do work. I think it kind of draws you to the library,” he said.

Still, there are limits. USC prohibits food inside the rest of the library and allows only bottled water or drinks in a plastic screw-top, no-spill library mug that sells for $5.99 and earns coffee refills at a discount.

But the policy is not strongly enforced. Throughout Doheny’s reading rooms, students sipped from cardboard coffee cups and nibbled on snacks like Goldfish crackers. Some students admitted sneaking in bigger repasts. One woman, a graduate student in public policy, confided, “I had a sandwich from Subway in my backpack.”

Across town, libraries at UCLA also formally ban all food and any drinks not in the university’s own official version of a spill-proof mug. But now those rules are being reexamined, partly because they are not well followed or enforced, officials said.

Pamela Snelson, national president of the Assn. of College and Research Libraries, says concerns remain about vermin and book damage, but it is almost impossible to counter the trend of “taking water bottles and coffee cups nearly everywhere.”

Snelson, who is librarian at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, began allowing covered drinks about five years ago and looks the other way about food during exam periods when students pull library all-nighters in their pajamas.

Sonoma State’s library at the Jean and Charles Schulz Information Center (named after the generous “Peanuts” cartoonist and his wife) has had its 150-seat Charlie Brown’s Cafe since 2000. Its menu includes breakfast burritos and tofu bowls, all of which can be eaten in the library -- except in the rare-book section.

Few problems have resulted, according to Mike Kiraly, the library’s director of operations. “It’s just sloppiness, not damage,” he said.

On the other hand, a Starbucks opened up next to Cal State San Marcos’ library two years ago; yet, despite enforcement problems, the university has stuck to its ban on all food and any drinks except those in spill-proof or screw-top containers. The normal Starbucks coffee cups do not make the approved list.

“We’re kind of swimming against the stream,” said Mark Stengel, associate dean of Kellogg Library. “But to preserve the equipment and the collections, we still try to limit the spills and cleanup.”

larry.gordon@latimes.com