Library Briefings

Q & A with Sarah Pritchard

The new University Librarian talks about trends in academic libraries

Sarah Pritchard was appointed the Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian on September 1, 2006. She brings to Northwestern 30 years of experience, most recently at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where she served as the university librarian since 1999. Here she talks about the experiences that have shaped her career and shares her thoughts on trends and challenges facing academic libraries today.

Given the variety of professional experiences you’ve had, what attracted you to the Northwestern position?

Northwestern University Library has had a strong reputation for decades – for its collections, its professional leadership, and for the high regard in which it is held on campus. But I was not looking for this job; instead, it came looking for me. As soon as I was asked whether I would consider being a candidate, I realized that an incredible path might be opening up and it was one I definitely wanted to follow. I was attracted by the chance to head up one of the best-respected and most impressive collections in the country, to work with a dynamic staff and faculty, and to be part of a well-supported educational and civic community. It came at a time when I could leave UC-Santa Barbara after shaping a number of big projects there, and it also gave me the chance to be closer to my family. It was when I started to interview and meet people here, however, that I really became excited, seeing such great support both for traditional and innovative library services, and for the Library’s playing an active role at many levels of the University. I wasn’t anxious to return to winter weather, but I still have lots of snow boots from my years in Massachusetts!

Can you tell us a little about your background?

I was interested in libraries from an early age, but library science is not a major at the undergraduate level, so I studied languages and linguistics, and interdisciplinary humanities, and areas that I now realize were great preparation for academic libraries, for handling the range of subjects we collect, and for having an appreciation of structures of knowledge and the history of science and ideas. Once I completed graduate work in French and in library science, I was fortunate to start my career at the Library of Congress. It is hard to convey the wealth of materials and the enormous variety of people and functions that make it run; one is immersed in the notion that the library is the center of the universe and I don’t think you ever lose that! But after 12 years there I did want to get into other kinds of research libraries, and I went on to do a fellowship at the Princeton University Library, a few years on the staff of the Association of Research Libraries, then the series of library directorships (Smith College, UC-Santa Barbara) that led me here. I’ve been fortunate to have worked in different settings and, in each case, places that are at the top of their game, that have high expectations and talented faculty, students, and staff. I’ve been able to collaborate across many institutions and organizations, and to develop professional projects related to subject fields, technology, leadership issues, and national policy – librarianship offers a dynamic blend. I’ve also learned a lot about plumbing, mold, HVAC, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which some days seem more relevant to operations than the heady intellectual issues.

Ten years ago, most libraries were not in the business of providing information electronically; today, that’s an increasingly important part of what they do. How is electronic information changing the academic library?

This is a watershed change that runs through every aspect of library work – how we do operational support and procure materials, how we catalog things, how we communicate with our constituencies, where we get the information and creative works they seek. How we search, what we search, how we store and generate and share information. We were using electronic systems when I first became a librarian in 1977, so it’s not as new as it seems; but back then we just had automated versions of manual tracking or indexing. What’s new is that the information itself is born digital, it changes constantly, it is produced by everyone not simply a few commercial enterprises, it is multimedia and iterative and peer-to-peer. The entire learning environment can be digital, the processes as well as the products. This means we need different approaches to license information, describe it, deploy it, recombine it. Library work requires a much broader skill-set these days, which we seek through expanding the roles and training of librarians, as well as by hiring systems programmers, web designers, intellectual property attorneys, publishing consultants and more. There are probably two main groups of changes, one clustered around providing new teaching, study and information delivery services for students, the other focused on the support of faculty research in areas such as electronic publishing or data archiving services. Interactive electronic information and communication underlie both of these.

What role will print materials play in the research library of the future?

That depends on how far into the future you want to see! I believe that large academic libraries especially will continue to have print collections for years to come. Those collections may evolve into more niche status but they will persist. Publishing is on the increase globally, though the U.S. percentage of world book output is lower (according to UNESCO); this reflects increased output from many smaller and less-developed countries, much of it not electronic. Access to information from all countries will mean ensuring access to print for quite some years. Moreover, it’s not just a question of print versus electronic. Research libraries have numerous physical formats to house and deliver: paper, microforms, artists’ books that are almost sculptural, sound recordings, graphic arts, realia, archival miscellany. For some subjects or some types of publications print will just be easier (we don’t want to read ebooks in the bathtub), it will be all there is, or it will have an artifactual historical value as an object. I see two trends. For the large corpus of scholarly, scientific, and business literature, and for common general information – mass media, textbooks, and reference – we are rapidly moving to digital form. At the same time, the special collections of academic libraries will become even more important, including everything from traditional manuscripts and rare books to very contemporary but non-digital objects collected from authors, public figures, organizations, and the creative community. It is these special collections that differentiate research and special libraries from each other. The digital corpus, by its very nature, can be everywhere; the one-of-a-kind objects cannot, at least not for serious research where reproductions don’t suffice. How will we sustain the cultural heritage of today, for scholars and citizens of the future? It is the responsibility of the great universities like Northwestern to work on both tracks, to have massive and well-organized digital access for the daily needs of students and faculty, and to have equally large and unique special collections that are the basis of primary research in the humanities and social sciences. Obviously there is some overlap, which makes it messy, interesting, and expensive.

What are some of the more important national trends in libraries and in information access today?

Over the past decade we have witnessed a major change in the way information is produced and delivered. Some of the resulting trends in research libraries include:
• Licensing large packages of digital texts, rather than buying one title at a time, with constant flux in scope and content;
• Consortial collaboration in purchasing resources, and in developing shared facilities for storage, preservation, and digitization;
• Personalization and integration of tools allowing students and faculty to use information, e.g., searching, delivery, production, course content, and file management;
• Partnerships across campus with faculty, information technology, student services, and research support offices;
• Managing campus systems to preserve locally generated digital materials such as research data, administrative records, courseware, and grey literature;
• Continued building of special collections of unique and rare primary sources such as manuscripts and photographs, with digital access to enable greater awareness as well as greater protection of the originals.

In general, how do you see libraries participating in and supporting the teaching mission of universities? Supporting undergraduate education?

Libraries continue to be actively used by students for study and research in many customary ways. Electronic remote access also allows 24/7 availability even to students spending the term abroad. Librarians are working to enhance services and learning in the physical and virtual domains, through such approaches as:

• Reconfiguring physical spaces to create technologically rich common areas, flexible and group study spaces, media labs, and library-oriented classrooms;
• Hosting related campus services such as writing labs and career centers;
• Linking substantive, high-quality electronic resources to course management systems, and consulting with faculty to integrate library assignments in curricula;
• Working with students in person and online to develop effective navigation and, more importantly, evaluation skills in the use of print and digital resources;
• Providing multiple levels of information -- large scale digitization of core collections, and targeted use of distinctive primary resources for special projects.

What is the library’s role in scholarly communication?

This has been an intense development in the last few years and emerges from the crises in periodical publishing, where steep price increases have led to sharp reductions in library holdings and thus in faculty access. The expertise of library staff in a variety of domains can help support change in scholarly communication:
• Increasing faculty awareness of the economics of traditional journal publishing and the unsustainable business practices that may result;
• Promoting new publishing models, both commercial and non-profit, such as peer-reviewed “open access” repositories, scholarly society initiatives, and innovative forms of research content on the web;
• Enabling a platform for publishing and delivery of electronic journals, digitized collections, and other products through the library or university;
• Providing information about copyright, and suggesting strategies for faculty to retain greater control over their intellectual property so as to enhance the use of new models of scholarly communication.