by Bruce Rosenbloom

Q: Can you briefly describe your background, why you came to Adelphi, and why you were interested in the position of Dean of Libraries?

A: I've been a librarian for over 30 years (it's hard to imagine), starting at the Chicago Public Library in the Music Department-my background was in music. I then went to the Northwestern University Music Library where I became very interested in library automation and systems, especially as related to bibliographic access and control issues. I then moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago as head of the cataloging department and in 1986 to SUNY Stony Brook where I had several positions ending up as Deputy Director of Libraries. By the time I left Stony Brook, I had experience managing a number of areas including the budget, technical and access services, systems, and facilities, and was the interim director for most of a year. We had just completed a major reorganization and rehab of the main library building (including a new music library and incorporating 3 of the science libraries) and a migration to a new library management system so I had done as much as one could at Stony Brook. This opportunity came up and it seemed like an interesting, exciting challenge, and a good place to move to. So I arrived at Adelphi last January, and have enjoyed my time here to date.

Q: What do you see as some of the problems or major issues here at Adelphi that you will be addressing?

A: Well, it was already decided to move the Science library into the Swirbul building and to move Archives and Special collections next door to the new residence hall. This gave us a great opportunity to think of the functionality and organization of Swirbul. In thinking about these issues, with the help of an advisory committee, we are moving ahead to reduce the number of service points in Swirbul in order to make more efficient use of the building and create more "one stop shopping" for our patrons. As an example, we intend to consolidate our reference desk which is on the first floor, with the service desk of the Information Commons which is on the second floor. Users don't want to differentiate between needing technical help and needing informational help. They may need a reference librarian to find an article online in JSTOR, for example, but then they need technical help to cut and past a graph from that article into their Word document. We don't see why students should have to run from one place to the next for different assistance, so we intend to consolidate those two service functions which will have an enlarged desk with staffing from both areas.

We intend to consolidate the Non-Print collection, now on the second floor, into our Circulation Department which will have a new service counter and enlarged staff space and shelving. This unit will continue to house the reserve collection which will become more electronic based.

Also, we currently have closed periodicals stacks which will become open stacks with a current periodical reading lounge on the first floor in place of the current Reference Desk. We hope to expose some windows currently blocked by classrooms on the second floor, and we will have our own classroom where we can more efficiently provide informational literacy classes. So those are some of the things we are thinking about, and some of the challenges.

Q: We all know the impact of technology on libraries, and some might argue that the role of a traditional library has declined, as result of the digitization of media and other trends. How would you see the impact of technology for the future of the Adelphi library?

A: Well, I think it is actually a wonderful opportunity. We still have an important role in helping connect our users to the best resources. With regard to online resources, one of our primary functions in teaching information literacy is to disabuse students of the idea that the Web, particularly the free Web, is the first and last stop in conducting research. We show them how limited Google can be, and how unreliable and chancy information from such a search can be. We can then point them to our wonderful array of royalty resources, the proprietary resources we pay good money for. This is a wonderful service, to be able to connect our users to databases they don't know about coming in as new students. And, of course, Swirbul is filled with technology with our Sager Lab, Gallagher Lab, and Information Commons.

We've embraced technology in libraries for a very long time. We don't expect users to have to always come into the library, and we recognize the need to provide good service and the delivery of information to remote users either in their dorms or homes. We're interested in the concept of chat reference, where we can interact with students who are not going to go to the main reference desk. It is something we've thought about and may explore.

Q: So the role of librarian has changed significantly over the last decade or so?

A: It has. We are generally much more technical, especially with regard to working with the Web. In addition to more traditional library technology applying to databases, cataloging, and library management systems, we are familiar with HTML, XML, and JavaScript. We can work in these environments, we're fluent in the basics of desktop computing, and we can help our users in using technology to not only connect with information but to also make good use of it.

Q: This newsletter goes out to professors. What would you like to tell professors about the library today, and how it will be in the future?

A: I would like to point out that we are a very service-oriented library. I'm extremely impressed with the tutorial nature of our reference staff, spending time shoulder-to-shoulder with our students helping them use technology for their information needs--as we see regularly in our Reference Sager computer lab. This type of service is not found in many academic libraries.

And with our collections, we are certainly striving to serve both the teaching and research needs of the campus-and our print collections will remain very important for the foreseeable future. I'd like to tell the faculty that we need to emphasize that our students need to be fluent in information literacy. More than ever in today's Google environment, our students need to understand how to access, evaluate, and use information. This is a primary goal of the Library Faculty and we will continue to solicit the cooperation of our teaching faculty to make sure we get students into our information literacy program to improve their information literacy skills.

So technology, informational literacy, and our collections and services are things I think we'll emphasize and continue to improve-to make clear to our teaching faculty that we're there to help them and their students.

Q: Any additional comments?

A: Well let me say a few additional things about technology. We are just bringing up a new Web-based interface to our important Inter-Library Loan service, so instead of having to print-out an Adobe PDF form, fill it out and send it in, we now have a Web-based interface to our inter-library loan system. We haven't announced it yet-we are still working out a few details. We recently installed the ARIEL software and hardware which uses the Internet to facilitate document delivery between libraries.

We also brought up subject access to our 13,000 electronic journals. So now, if you don't quite know the exact name of an electronic journal, you now have subject access to them. We intend to implement an electronic reserves service and install a self-service circulation kiosk. We've recently completed the migration of the staff modules to the Windows-based version of our library management system-the public sees the ALICAT catalog portion-and have contracted for our first major digitization project involving back issues of the Delphian. We're also working with the FCPE to digitize our high-use instructional videos for easy viewing on campus using streaming technology. We're looking forward to working on campus Portal efforts and hope to take advantage of the exciting linking opportunities for electronic resources brought about by the new Open URL standard. These are a few things we are very much looking forward to as aspects of technology that we think will help our users.

Q: Do you keep track on the usage of these online journals and databases, as they are extremely expensive?

A: We have mixed data. The industry is struggling with standards for usage. For example, we have vendors who are aggregators of data-who offer a collection of databases but provide data only at the most general level-you can't drill down to see what individual databases are being used. Some will count every mouse click and other won't. Some will count new searches in one way or another, while some will-or won't--count accessing the full text from an index point as a usage. So since the industry is struggling on standardizing statistics, it makes it very difficult for us to really analyze these data. But we are excited-we just hired a new librarian who will be involved with tracking electronic resources as one of her tasks-to try to get a handle on electronic usage of these databases. She will also work to promote awareness and usage of these resources.