The State of the Library is Not Hush-Hush

Annual event discussed diversity, budgetMeghan McLaughlin The Santa Clara February 8, 2018A three-year long tradition continued at the State of the Library event on Tuesday, Jan. 30. Library staff presented on and discussed diversity, budget and assessment techniques.In the 2017 to 2020 strategic plan, the number one goal of the library is to emphasize programs that support a diverse student population. “Equality, diversity and inclusion really are fundamental values shared by all libraries and our commitment really reflects that,” University Librarian Jennifer Nutefall said.“We support and serve individuals of all backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities and national origins,” she said.A portion of this is digitizing many of the library’s resources so they can be reached anywhere at any time.Along with 50 sheet maps of the university and the Santa Clara geographic area, every issue of The Santa Clara has been digitized and indexed at the article level.Rice Majors, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Scholarly Communication, spoke to the importance of these records.“This is one of the primary ways in which the history of the university is documented,” Majors said. “The students end up with the last voice, the only voice, on a lot things that happen on the campus.”Newly introduced was an undergraduate diversity fellowship that will begin in the fall of this year, which consists of a year-long internship and a public presentation.“We want to integrate opportunities for students who are interested in pursuing diversity issues and provide experience to students,” Nutefall said.The library has also committed more resources to open access and gained a closer relationship with Lever Press, an initiative offering digital peer-reviewed resources.Less than one percent of the library’s over four million dollar collections and access budget currently goes toward open access, a portion Majors predicts will increase in the future.In the coming three years, about 57,000 print monographs will be eliminated from the library’s inventory. Resources that have not been used or have rarely been used since the introduction of OSCAR in 1992 will be removed.Subscriptions account for nearly 82 percent of the collections and access budget, prompting Majors to stress the importance of assessments to ensure the necessity of each resource the library supplies.The library recently completed the final year in a three-year cycle of assessing electronic resources, especially electronic journals.Nicole Branch, Associate University Librarian for Learning and Engagement, mentioned a comprehensive space assessment that was conducted over the past year.There are currently plans to add 19 individual study spaces to the second floor in spring of this year.Additional individual study spaces will also populate outside of classrooms 203 and 205. Contact Meghan McLaughlin at mhmclaughlin@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.