(PDF version also available)
THE INTELLECTUAL CROSSROADS
OF THE UNIVERSITY
The Expanding Role of the
Drew University Library
March 21, 2007
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Table of Contents
- The Library as Place
- The Library as a Dynamic Continuum of Resources
- The Library as a Teaching Institution
- The Library as a Discriminating Consumer of Technology
- The Library as a Steward of Distinctive Collections
- The Library as the Place to Celebrate Scholarship
- Projects for the Comprehensive Campaign
- Conclusion: The Library as the Intellectual Crossroads of the University
- Endnotes
Overview
President Weisbuch asked the Library to think boldly about the future of the Library and create a visionary planning document to shape the direction of the Library for the next decade. This report is a distillation of the spirited conversations held over the past year.
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The Drew University Library has a distinguished history in the service of the students and faculty of the University. Its mission is to provide access to trustworthy, authoritative knowledge and to provide services that directly support teaching, scholarship, and independent learning in each of the three schools. In fulfilling this mission the Library must renew itself as a:
- Distinctive, inviting place for study and interaction with other learners
- Dynamic continuum of pertinent resources
- Teaching institution promoting sophisticated research skills
- Thoughtful consumer of technology
- Steward of distinctive collections
- Place to celebrate scholarship
In short, the Library sees itself as the intellectual crossroads of the University and is eager to expand that role. If the vitality of the Library is to be maintained, let alone expanded, the Drew community needs to invest mightily in the Library's future. This report highlights recent accomplishments as well as the commitments we seek from the Drew community.
Context
The Drew University Library is often compared to those of the Oberlin Group, an elite group of eighty national liberal arts colleges, of which Drew is a member. Yet, only three of them have doctoral programs (Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Middlebury), only one has a theological school (University of the South), and none has both. Drew occupies a unique niche and that distinctiveness shapes the work of the Library. Collections and services are developed to support the specific needs of undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs.
The greatest single influence on the Library over the past decade has been the impact of digital technology. It suffuses every aspect of how the Drew Library does business. It is reshaping collections and services, and it is changing the DNA of the Library's users. Consider these telling facts:
The principal entry point to the Library's resources and services is now through the Library's Web site.
- The Library has far more electronic journal subscriptions (23,000) than print and microform subscriptions (2,605).
- The leading reference works for most disciplines are electronic, many exclusively so.
- Students have grown up with computers and adapt quickly to computer and Internet services.
- Students prefer to locate pertinent scholarship electronically.
- The Library's electronic resources are available 24/7 from any computer with Internet access.
- Library reference assistance is available 24/7 through an electronic chat service.
In short, the Library has become a virtual destination with unlimited hours as well as a geographic destination with limited hours.
While it is futile to predict the future with any precision, it is a safe to suppose that the digital revolution is still in its infancy. Yet even in the Google era, the Library serves at once as the home of and portal to the world of scholarship for the Drew community. As such, the Library has a distinctive role as a physical location that has not been fully realized.
I
The Library as Place
The three buildings that comprise the Library complex – the Rose Library, the Learning Center , and the Methodist Center – provide space for study and collaboration, collections, and services. However, they have not been shaped as optimal learning environments.
Too many library buildings unwittingly reflect an era when educational pedagogy and a nineteenth century sense of decorum dictated spaces where students largely studied alone in uncomfortable chairs in quiet room and alcoves, bereft of the comforts of food, beverage, music, and conversation that would otherwise be readily available in the dorm or at home. The care of books was given priority over the nurturing of young scholars. Such constraints are no longer acceptable in the academic library of the twenty-first century. The successful venture of Barnes & Noble Bookstores with Starbucks Coffee offers important cultural clues to connections that should be exploited in the university library. Increasingly, areas once unthinkable in libraries are being created in libraries to help them flourish as campus centers for scholarly exploration.
Not surprisingly, colleges and universities that have completed major renovations, expansions, and new buildings report that student use of the library increased dramatically. Attractive, comfortable, flexible facilities promote scholarship. Churchill was right when he observed, “First we erect our buildings and then they shape us.”
Challenges
While the Drew collections and services are strong and competitive and the exterior look of the buildings is attractive, the interiors communicate a contrary message – these spaces have not been well cared for nor have they kept up with the times. Consider:
- The stacks are crammed. The Library has been effectively out of space for seven years as the Lucker Report of 2000 documented. (1) Thousands of unprocessed volumes are stored throughout the campus, and they include valuable special collections. The Chemistry Department has requested that its library be relocated to the main library, but there is no room for that transfer. Study space continues to be reduced in order to erect more shelving.
- There are only a couple areas for group study.
- The HVAC system is erratic and compromises the work and study environment of the Library and is destructive to the paper collections.
- The lighting is generally harsh (fluorescent) and lighting in the Rose Library stacks is inadequate. Consequently the Rose stacks are forbidding to some students.
- The Learning Center and Rose Library comprise a complicated labyrinth that is difficult to navigate.
- There are too few electrical outlets, compromising the use of laptops.
- The public areas have not been painted in twenty-five years.
- There is no place to eat in the building.
The Library must be a much more welcoming place, sensitive to the needs of students and to the environmental elements that promote intellectual activities. It must be an inviting place, a “great good place” – in short, a place worthy of our collections, our services, and our students. (2) To that end:
- An experimental café is being created in the lobby of the Learning Center and is scheduled to open in September 2007. No longer will students need to leave the building to eat. Tables and chairs will be placed in the lobby as well as outside the Library, creating places to gather, eat, drink, converse, and study. Given the wireless environment of the Learning Center , students will be able to use their laptops in the café as well as on the outside tables.
Recommended Short-Term Projects
- Install electrical compact shelving on the lower level of the Learning Center as the first step in addressing the shelving crisis.
- Engage an architect that specializes in libraries to create a master plan for the renovation and expansion of the library.
- Redesign the main floor of the Learning Center (including paint, new lighting systems with task lighting for study tables and carrels, and new furniture). It would be welcoming, create a stunning first impression, provide a quality study environment, and contribute to attracting new students and retaining current students.
- Install electrical outlets in all study areas to facilitate the use of laptops.
- Remedy the chronic HVAC and roof leak problems.
- Expand library hours to 24/7 for major portions of the academic year or create an all-night or all-hours, self-contained study area.
- Progressively move non-library functions from the Rose Library and Learning Center as a first and essential preparation for the expansion of the Library. This recommendation is fundamental to the Lucker Report and has been endorsed by the University Space Committee.
Recommended Longer-Term Project
- Completely redesign, renovate, and expand the library buildings. The renovation of the Learning Center provides a naming opportunity for the building. Many of our peer schools have completed major library building projects in the last ten years (e.g. Skidmore College, Whitman College, Trinity College, Colgate University ).
II
The Library as a Dynamic Continuum of Resources
The explosive expansion of electronic databases and texts, as well as global interconnectivity, may be the greatest change in learning since collections of books replaced oral traditions. Many librarians were amazed to see the use of libraries jump dramatically after the displacement of the card catalog by the electronic catalog and the addition of online abstracting and indexing services. Few understood that the card catalog and paper indexes had been formidable barriers to the collections for many students. Now electronic resources are trumping paper when it comes to journal literature. And the new publications of the U.S. Government are now almost exclusively digital.
What then of the book? Despite prognostications in the popular press, the book is flourishing and will continue to have its distinctive and distinguished niche in the pantheon of knowledge. Much authenticated scholarship is still published on paper; nevertheless, the size of the average print runs of academic book publishers has decreased. Google's massive digitization of the book collections of major research libraries will certainly have ramifications for us, but in yet undetermined ways. If faculty in the humanities and many areas of the social sciences were told that the Library would no longer be investing in books in their areas and that they were to depend exclusively on electronic resources, they would have proof certain that the Library did not understand the primary modes of scholarly communication in their areas.
Clearly, the variety of resource formats is rapidly expanding. In this dynamic environment the library's role is not to be a professional lobbyist for any single type of information and knowledge, whether print or digital. Its mission is to provide the resources that its constituencies require, regardless of format. That mixture is different for each area of scholarly inquiry and is constantly shifting.
Challenges
- An obstacle to optimum use of the Library's print collections is the Dewey Decimal System. The lengthy string of letters and numbers that comprise the call number makes it a challenge to actually find a book in the stacks. Also, it takes longer for a newly received book to be catalogued in Dewey than it would for it to be catalogued in LC, thus costing researchers time and the Library money.
- A greater percentage of the Library's materials budget will need to be allocated to purchasing access to content, rather than the content itself.
- In the electronic environment, journal subscriptions are increasingly acquired in large bundles of subject-related titles, rather than as individual titles. Typically, the library is paying for access to the titles and no longer owns the titles. Electronic books are likely to be acquired in similar fashion. Reliable electronic archives are required to ensure this access over time.
Recommended Projects
- The Library of Congress Classification System should be adopted and the collections converted from Dewey to LC as soon as possible. A major conversion project requires ample stack space, so the conversion of the lower level of the Learning Center to compact shelving is essential to this project.
- A proposal to a major foundation, such as Mellon, should be written that would enable Drew, perhaps in partnership with a few other libraries in universities of our size, to explore the practical implications of progressively having several million volumes of scholarship accessible by computer over the next decade. Based on current practices with journal literature, we can predict that our students will relish locating key texts electronically, but, rather than read them on screen, they will reach for the print button. The time is ideal to experiment with high speed printers that can produce monographs, including facsimile covers, in just minutes. Is that a viable option for libraries of our size? What are the costs? Who should pay – the user or the university or both? How are copyright issues to be resolved? These are some of the questions that the project would address.
III
The Library as a Teaching Institution
The Drew Library takes a dim view of stockpiling books, journals, media and electronic texts as an end in itself. Resources that languish on shelves or in databases do not contribute to a student's education. Our students must become highly skilled in determining pertinent resources for their assignments. Knowledge of the structures of scholarly communication and their cognate technologies is essential to academic success and is the badge of the lifelong learner. (3)The eruption of digital resources has complicated the task of searching for authenticated scholarship rather than simplified it.
The goal of the Library's instructional program is to assist students in forming an “intellectual framework for identifying, finding, understanding, evaluating, and using information.” (4) A library research component is built into each First Year Seminar as well as into each section of English 2. These sessions are taught by the Library faculty. An elective course in research methods for theological students is taught by the Theological Librarian. In addition, course-integrated instruction continues to grow throughout the curricula of the three schools. The total classes taught last year increased 15% over the total for 2004-05 with 82 sections taught in 121 sessions. Most sessions included the development of a Web page tailored to the course.
Recent Steps
- A plan for information literacy assessment was developed by the Library for the University's report to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
Recommended Projects
- The College is reviewing its General Education requirements. It is a critical opportunity to integrate information literacy more fully into the liberal arts curriculum of the 21 st century.
- Collaborate with the Curriculum Committee of the Theological School as to how information literacy might be integrated into its curriculum.
- Investigate the development of online information tutorials to complement the classroom teaching program
IV
The Library as a Discriminating Consumer of Technology
The Library strives to be a discriminating user of technology, always asking if a technological option significantly increases student access to valuable resources and services. Despite its inherent allure, the Library sees information technology as a tool for dramatically enhancing scholarship, not as a goal in and of itself. (5)
Sometimes visitors to campus fail to see the Library and the campus as a whole as technologically advanced. This is in large measure because the campus is a laptop environment, hence the absence of the impressive banks of computers in the library and in labs that is typical of many other universities.
The past five years have seen steady technological advances in the Library. Recent improvements include:
- The Library buildings becoming a wireless environment
- Migration to a new Integrated Library System
- Creation of a systems librarian position
- The first redesign and usability testing of the Library's Web site
- Improved access to our electronic resources
- Increased access to electronic resources primarily through participation in consortia
- Installation of a print management system
- The purchase and configuration of software that displays to users, at the point of viewing a citation, a link to follow to see whether or not there is access to the full electronic text.
The Library's vision and needs have always reached far ahead of its means. With the recent advances in partnership with Computer Network Services, the Library has kept reasonable pace with current technological developments. A number of bold initiatives would build on our gains and deepen the academic resources of the community. All of them are dependent upon the continuing ability of CNS to support technological innovation.
Recommended Projects
- Establish a Learning Commons. The term “Learning Commons” refers to areas in libraries where computing, tutorial, and library assistance and resources come together. Incorporating space and resources for group work, Learning Commons facilities also bring together assistance from varied departments, such as the library, the computing helpdesk, writing center, peer tutoring, disability services, study support staff, media services, etc. These spaces are best located on the main floor of the library. This confluence of technology and services is intended to bring together the typically campus-scattered resources students need most in one easily accessible place and encourage students to use this space for their study and work. Such a strategic realignment of critical student services would have serious space implications.
- Create an Experimental High Tech Group Study Area. CNS and the Library would like to collaborate on an experimental group study area that would be equipped with projection capability. This would enable students to plug laptops into a simple projector to project images, PowerPoint presentations, and the like from their laptops onto a clean wall or a screen. Given the increased use of technology in classroom presentations, students need multiple places to create, practice, and discuss such assignments.
- Participate in Campus Courses Electronically. As students and faculty become accustomed to using Course Management Software (CMS), such as Blackboard, as a portal for all course-related materials, including syllabi, homework assignments, reserve readings and other materials, the Library will increase its presence in those courses. Subject specialist librarians will be able to provide faculty with online training materials and links to be incorporated into their courses, as well as to help them make links from within their CMS courses to electronic resources for student study and research.
Integrated instructional communication technologies in CMS systems will make it possible for librarians to hold “office hours” online for a particular course, or to provide live or recorded Library instruction via a Web broadcast. Embedded librarianship might be as simple as a link to the librarians' email from the contacts page in the CMS for the course or as elaborate as discussion monitoring. In addition, CMS systems of the future will probably allow provision of automatic “portalized” resources and material in a course based on the subject area. Already many libraries have successfully linked their Web sites into the campus CMS systems.
- Pursue the Next Generation of an Integrated Library System (ILS).
Integrated library systems, like the current SIRSIDynix system at Drew, enable staff to organize, manage and circulate our materials, and enable users to search for and find materials. The integrated library systems of the future will incorporate:
- More powerful and flexible searching and display options
- The ability to do a single search across our electronic databases and resources and sort the results
- Links from the library catalog to book review sources, catalogs of other libraries, and related resources
- Interactive updates on library resources and services via tools like blogs, wikis and newsfeeds
- Tools to save, organize and output citations from database search results
- Improved data storage, display and management of our print and electronic materials
Such new and improved technology may come by way of open source library software, developed and maintained by voluntary associations of libraries, rather than by for-profit companies. Drew is a member of VALE, the New Jersey consortium of academic libraries, which is investigating developing such a system for its members.
V
The Library as a Steward of Distinctive Collections
The Drew Library houses a rich range of special collections and archives. They encompass the world-renowned Methodist collections, the celebrated Willa Cather collections, the Governor Thomas H. Kean Archive, the Walt Whitman collection, the Chesler Collection of Cartoon Art and Graphic Satire, the Haberly Collection on the Book Arts, the Georges Simenon collection, the archives of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Drew University Archives, and many more. While Drew has many more special collections than many universities of similar size, that is not Drew's mark of true distinction.
What truly sets Drew apart from many libraries is its insistence that special material be used – and used by student and scholar alike. The use of primary source material can be an educationally transforming experience. Increasingly, college classes, not just doctoral students and visiting scholars, are using these collections. Drew is also identifying scholars whose work would benefit from a visit to campus to mine recent acquisitions. Such was the case with the Cather collections; a major colloquium in October 2005 brought twenty scholars together to present papers based on their research of the Drew collections. A volume of that scholarship will be published by FDU Press this year.
As recommended by the Library of Congress, the Library is creating collection-level cataloging records that describe entire collections, so that students and scholars searching the Web will be led to the special material at Drew. (6) Finding Aids for these collections are also placed on the Library's Web site. The Library has begun to digitize some of the special collections, as well as its special exhibits, and to participate in cooperative national and international projects that interlink subject densities of unique material. An NEH-funded Preservation Needs Assessment was recently conducted, and a comprehensive long-range plan to preserve these collections is being drafted.
Challenges
- The special collections are scattered throughout the buildings. Few of them enjoy proper climate-controlled environments and appropriate security.
- Keeping pace with the demands for the use of these collections has become a major challenge to the Library due to limited staff.
- The Wilson Reading Room in the Methodist Center where all special material is used under supervision is too small, not appointed in a style worthy of the collections, and is insufficiently staffed to provide optimum security.
Recommended Short-term Projects
- Increase the digitization of special collections and archives.
- Establish a formal department for special collections and archives with additional staffing.
- Mark the opening of new exhibits with special programs and receptions. Provide digital access to all exhibits.
- Increase the visibility of special collections in recruitment publications and in college admissions programs.
Recommended Longer-term Projects
- Consolidate all special collections and archives in the Methodist Center , a building designed for special collections and archives.
- Build a new stack module for special collections in the unfinished basement area of the Methodist Center without compromising the work space of the Commission of Archives and History.
- Establish an endowment for a Special Collections Librarian position.
- Enlarge the Wilson Reading Room, creating a handsome space in which students and scholars can consult Methodist material, all special collections, and archives.
VI
The Library as the Place to Celebrate Scholarship
The Library is strategically located between the residential and classroom buildings of the campus. It is the academic place where students and faculty of the three schools regularly intersect. The coming of the café to the main lobby will increase the opportunity for people to informally gather and exchange ideas. The Library should also take an enlarged programmatic role in the promotion and celebration of campus scholarship in partnership with the provost and the faculties.
Recent Steps
- The Library awards two major cash prizes every two years for the outstanding faculty book and the outstanding alumni/ae book (The Bela Kornitzer Prizes).
- The Library hosts a major exhibit of faculty publications every two years and includes a reception.
- The newly created George Karpati Lectureship endowment will enable the Library to bring an international writer or scholar to campus to lecture in the area of Jewish history, Eastern European history, or Holocaust Studies.
Recommended Short-term Projects
- Purchase new exhibit cases for the lobby of the Learning Center in which to showcase faculty publications on a permanent basis.
- Host programs, in coordination with the provost, that celebrate the publications of faculty and staff.
- Use the Library Web site to focus on faculty publications.
- Encourage faculty to direct their students to special collections for research projects, honors theses, and doctoral theses.
- Encourage faculty to design class projects that culminate in special exhibits in the Library. Public programs and receptions would be part of these exhibits.
- Enlarge the program of the Friends of the Library to include more lectures and presentations related to the Drew collections, and develop membership.
Recommended Longer-term Project
- Establish an endowment that would provide annual prizes for the best student papers, the best honors theses, and the best doctoral dissertations. The awarding of the prizes would take place at a special program in the Library.
VII
Projects for the Comprehensive Campaign
The imminent comprehensive campaign of the University is an opportune time to fund several of the major initiatives outlined in this report. We would especially recommend:
- Redesigning the main floor of the Learning Center
- Establishing an endowment for a Special Collections Librarian
- Creating a centralized place for special collections
Conclusion
The Library as the Intellectual Crossroads
of the University
The Library sits on a major intersection of the campus. The users of the Library come through the physical doors and they come through the virtual doors. It is the place where students and faculty from the three schools come to garner resources, secure assistance in their research, and collaborate with other learners. It is a place of intellectual exploration and discovery aided by talented librarians and the magical efficiencies of technology. It is a place where books, media, electronic resources, special collections, and archives are brought together as distinctive, coherent collections in support of the programs of the three schools. It is a place where technology expands the range of available scholarship and frees it from a single location. It is a place where students and faculty meet and celebrate the scholarship of the University.
The Library is eager to enlarge its contribution to the intellectual life of the campus.
Implementing the recommendations of this report will ensure academic vitality, excitement, and intensity at the intellectual crossroads of Drew University .
End Notes
See attachment #4.
Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place (New York: Paragon Press, 1989).
Andrew D. Scrimgeour, “More Than Books, Bricks, and Bytes: The Role of the Library at a Small University , Visions: Newsletter of the Drew University Library , Issue No. 9 (Winter 2001), pp. 4-5.
Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education: Eligibility Requirements and Standards for Accreditation, Middle States Commission on Higher Education, 2002.
Stanley N. Katz, “In Information Technology, Don't Mistake a Tool for a Goal,” The Chronicle of Higher Education , June 15, 2001, p. B7-B9.
“Exposing Hidden Collections,” a conference at the Library of Congress, September 8-9, 2003.