t’s a familiar scene.

A late night spent beneath the soft glow of a desk lamp casting light over open pages. Or an early morning settled into a chair, turning to Chapter One. Maybe it’s an afternoon in a quiet section, wandering among shelves, or a lively study session where you spent more time talking than reading. However they are used, campus libraries and the books inside sit at the center of student life and culture.

So when, in August 2025, Berkshire Community College lost more than 40,000 books nearly overnight to mold and book lice, it was a blow that struck directly at the hearts of Berkshire students and librarians alike. As the college began rebuilding the collection, BCC received donations from a network of libraries and academic institutions across New England — including more than 100 books from Harvard.

Two years earlier, Berkshire moved their entire physical collection offsite to allow for a $4 million renovation intended to repair one of the oldest community college libraries in Massachusetts.

“All 43,000 and 600-something books, when they returned to us — they were covered in mold, book lice and Scavenger Beetles,” Karen Carreras-Hubbard, coordinator of library services at Berkshire, says. The three full-time librarians and one part-time librarian were left with the almost insurmountable task of restoring a massive collection from scratch.

“As a community college, my book budget was $6,000 a year. For 43,000 books — that is a million dollars worth of books,” Carreras-Hubbard says. Not in her wildest dreams, she says, did she think they’d be able to rebuild.

Realizing that they couldn’t rebuild the collection on their own, Carreras-Hubbard and other faculty members began reaching out to institutions across the Berkshire area for support. One of their first calls went to the Clark Art Institute, where library director Andrea Puccio circulated word of Berkshire’s loss to public libraries and to the New England chapter of the Art Libraries Society of North America.

Then, the news reached Harvard.

Thanks to Jessica Aberle, a collection development librarian at the Fine Arts Library, 122 art books were donated to Berkshire Community College last month. The material, Harvard Library spokesperson Tenzin Dickie said in an email, consisted of “deaccessioned duplicates and other materials that were not part of our Fine Arts Library collection.”

Berkshire Community College has a substantial Associate’s Degree program in the visual arts, and Carreras-Hubbard recalls how Lisa Griffith, the visual arts program advisor, was deeply concerned about how the loss of the collection would affect her students. “One of the things that art students sometimes need is to look at pictures. They need to look at art,” Carreras-Hubbard says.

And they don’t come cheap — art books could cost as much as $200.

Carreras-Hubbard quipped about the process of driving to pick up the books — the journey to Harvard is two hours and forty minutes, and the Fine Arts Library, which is next to the Science Center, is tricky to access by car. Not to mention the labor of loading all 122 books into the trunk of her Honda HR-V.

It was just one of many trips Carreras-Hubbard made to revitalise BCC’s collection. She drove to places like Amherst College (a modest hour and a half) and Nashua, New Hampshire (a lengthier three hours). She received donations from Brown University, Syracuse University, and even a two-time Grammy winner.

But the work didn’t end there: once the books arrived at BCC, the painstaking process of cataloging them began.

Despite the strain, Carreras-Hubbard knows how important it is for Berkshire to have a physical collection — especially since students with limited technological access may not benefit from online resources. “You try reading philosophy on your iPhone.”

Carreras-Hubbard emphasizes the importance of providing students at BCC with high-quality, academic material that fits their needs. The priority is art books, nursing textbooks, engineering manuals, and other books that support the curriculum.

Carreras-Hubbard emphasizes that community college students, who may not have “the educational background to get into Harvard right away,” need access to these materials just as much as Ivy League students. Berkshire’s library, she says, is instrumental in offering a robust education.

“It’s kind of the heart of an institution.”

—Magazine writer Sarit O. Greenwood can be reached at [email protected].

—Magazine writer Valerie I. Ogboi can be reached at [email protected]