TCU’s plan to move 1 million books out of the Mary Couts Burnett Library prompted discussion among faculty, staff and students about the necessity and whom it will affect.

The books will be moved to an off-campus warehouse starting this summer as part of library renovations to make more study space available.

Some students have different thoughts on whether more study space is necessary.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Selina Rodriguez, a first-year kinesiology major, said. “The library gets full pretty often, and when it comes down to finals or a test week, you can’t find a place to study in the library.”

Alex Smith, a sophomore speech pathology major, disagreed and said she always finds a place to sit.

“I like the fact that the library is busy,” Smith said. “I study better when there are a lot of other people around me working really hard.”

Students and faculty can still access the offsite materials by scan requests, a daily courier service and a virtual shelf browsing software.

Makenzie Horist, a junior secondary English education major, is taking Dan Williams' Books and Print Culture class, where she is studying the transition to electronic books.

“We are studying how our society is straying away from the use of printed books and becoming more dependent on digital materials like e-books and online databases,” Horist said.

Williams used the moving of the library books as an example of how the university is slowly making this societal shift from printed materials to digital, she said.

This is not the first time the university has had to move books to an offsite location. James Lutz, director of Library Administrative Services, said the university is currently renting space off Camp Bowie Boulevard. Books have been stored at that location for the past 10 years, and it is 95 percent full.