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MAIREAD MARTIN: Well, of course as we talk, I'm reminded there's so many things going
on in libraries right now and so many opportunities. I'm reminded that in the '90s when the internet
really took off, one of the first things people said was, well, we don't need libraries anymore.
And I think all evidence has shown that that's not the case.
BARBARA DEWEY: Well, and in fact, even the physical locations in Penn State, the Pattee
and Paterno Library is an example, where we're getting higher usage than ever, because our
students are flocking to the kind of environment that attracts them. And then they are in proximity
with the scholarly resources that faculty would wish them to use for the kind of rigorous
education and high quality education that we provide. And so it's really a win-win situation.
And our biggest challenge is capacity, with a huge campus like this. So I think, too,
another trend is to strategically look at not only the library spaces, the Knowledge
Commons, but also spaces on campus, learning spaces where students gather to do their work
and see what kind of expertise we can bring to those spaces too. And not just focus on
one building or one library system.
MAIREAD MARTIN: And when I have to explain to people what I do, one of the things that
I think people understand about the University Libraries is the scale of the enterprise.
For example, some of the statistics I use, because my group, we're responsible, as you
know, of course, for the technical infrastructure that supports daily activities in the library.
And that doesn't sound very compelling until you tell people, well, for example, 2010/11
there were over 2 million searches on The CAT.
Over 800,000 items were circulated. There were over 100,000 inter-library loans. And
in desktop computing alone, we had over a million hours of usage. I mean, they're colossal
statistics.
BARBARA DEWEY: Right. And many people don't realize that Penn State Libraries is the ninth
largest research library in North America, public or private. So we're right up there
with Harvard and Yale and Michigan and Berkeley and a number of others. So the scale is truly
enormous.
And the complexity, too, because we're reaching out all over the state of Pennsylvania to
the campuses too, which is really great for them, because their faculty, staff, and students
have access to the ninth largest research library. And most branch campuses at universities
do not have that kind of access. But that access also requires a robust and compatible
technological infrastructure.
MAIREAD MARTIN: Right. And we have to stay competitive.
BARBARA DEWEY: And to stay competitive, right. I really believe that these spaces that we've
created will be a huge recruiting tool, not only for students who will resonate with it
immediately, but also with faculty, particularly faculty that are coming right out of graduate
school and have very high expectations about the kind of technology that is available.
They also have high expectations for access to a large corpus of scholarly material. So
the collections continue to be important.
MAIREAD MARTIN: And there's a new collection here in Pattee-Paterno which is seeing great
use. And that's the Leisure Reading Collection. And that became the focus of the new reading
room downstairs. And I must say, it's one collection that I personally am enjoying very
much. And I think it's excellent that we're providing that for our students, as much as
their scholarly and academic content as well.
BARBARA DEWEY: Right, because we still very much promote reading. And it sounds like a
simple thing. But it is the basis for success for people in any discipline. And I think
there's a lot of research to show that. We are taking very seriously in the Libraries
how we promote literacy.
And we have outreach activities even with public schools in that regard. But how do
we promote literacy for our own students so that they can effectively do research in an
internet age, where it's easy to go out to find material that is not substantiated? But
what about the peer-reviewed, deep scholarly literature that I know our faculty would wish
them to use? So we have a lot of activity relating to instruction, in partnership with
faculty, to provide those skills, which really are lifelong skills to help people be critical
about the information that they're receiving.
MAIREAD MARTIN: Right. And of course, one characteristic of the library as a domain
is the service aspect of it. And I think that's something, working with librarians, that IT
people have been able to-- essentially IT organizations haven't been around as long
as libraries, clearly. But your service models and your service approach is phenomenal.
BARBARA DEWEY: Well, I think that has helped us, in some of the work that we're doing with
you, frame it in a different way than other institutions are framing it. A lot of times
when we want to build an archive or repository, we go out and buy the technology. And then
we try to get people to help us populate it. But at Penn State, because of our service
philosophy and our buy-in from our DLT colleagues and your colleagues, we're looking at it from
the suite-of-services point of view. And I think it's a very powerful kind of approach,
where we are looking at what kind of service can we provide? And then the population of
those archives and those databases will occur.
MAIREAD MARTIN: Right. In fact, today working as we do to support the University Libraries,
I must say that my unit has fantastic access to skills that we really are going to need
more and more in IT. You mentioned, of course, that the University Archives is part of the
University Library and also the Libraries has a Preservation and Digitization department.
But as we, for example, provide storage services, more and more we need to know about preservation
and archival sciences. And we need a marriage of the expertise and skill set in those areas
with the IT expertise. So I think it's a great time, if you're an IT person, to get engaged
with libraries, and if you're a librarian, to get engaged with IT, because we have an
awful lot to do together.
BARBARA DEWEY: Right. We really work hand in hand, especially in building these new
systems to connect to scholarship, wherever it is. And another aspect of it is to make
the creative output of Penn State available to the world. And that's a big goal. But it's
something that drives us forward because there's just tremendous breakthroughs happening all
over Penn State.
MAIREAD MARTIN: And I think Penn State has done extraordinarily well with the creation
of digital content. And digital scholarship is very mature here. But one of the things
that we realize we really have to step up and support is the preservation of that content.
And of course, that's what libraries do.
MAIREAD MARTIN: Right.
MAIREAD MARTIN: And I think that's where our partnership is very valuable. And we have
a unique opportunity to face this challenge together and to become really good stewards
of Penn State's digital content.
BARBARA DEWEY: And it's not just digitized books. People think about that a lot. But
we're working in media, streaming media of all kinds. And really the power moving forward
for scholarship is the marriage of text and media. And how can we support our faculty
and our students doing these new modes of publication and preserve it?
MAIREAD MARTIN: Right. And it's a tall order. And of course, one of the things we worry
about here is sustainability, because of the scale of Penn State.
But we've seen, as I said, with digital scholarship and the creation of content, that things take
off. And effectively, we've got to be there to support the early adopters, the people
are out there in front, and be thinking about things for them. I think there's sometimes
in assumption that if it's on the web, it's persistent. And of course, we know that's
not true.
BARBARA DEWEY: It's very much at risk.
MAIREAD MARTIN: And also there's, I think, an assumption that, well, if it's stored,
it's OK. But now we haven't been storing things digitally for long enough to know about, well,
what happens when you have bit rot? What happens when formats become obsolete?
And that's, I think, where we're really going to have a new role to play. And we're seeing
more and more that IT units across Penn State are interested in how they might collaborate
with the Libraries in that regard, to preserve and archive the content for the faculty, students,
researchers.
BARBARA DEWEY: Right. And we get a lot of requests from faculty also to help them manage
their data. So you could call it personal data management, for example. Faculty who
use visual photographs, digital photographs, and they may have thousands of those.
How can they manage that data? How can they access what they need? And how can they preserve
it? And so sometimes the service aspect is so important, because we may not, in some
cases, house that data, because it's their data. But we can help them to do that.