Maryland Libraries: Stop One, One Stop

Meet the New Dean of Libraries...On the Radio

Quicktime

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Patricia Steele, UM's new dean of libraries, recently joined public radio's Kojo Nnamdi to discuss the future of academic collections in an increasingly digital world.

It's a highly "disruptive time" creating tremendous flux for students, faculty members and librarians, she said.

Steele came to Maryland September first from Indiana University, Bloomington where she held a similar post. There she took an active role in working with Google to digitize the library collections at Indiana and other Big 10 schools.

Here are some of Steele's comments from the broadcast.

Re: Digitization

Steele said UM hopes to work with Google to digitize the University's library collection, something that would take Maryland decades to accomplish on its own.

"We did a mini-experiment [at Indiana] to find out whether we could do our own mass digitization, and we found out, NO, it wasn't that easy....It's very expensive...fraught with all kinds of difficulties, and we were very happy to have an organization such as Google handle it for us."

Becoming a Google library will expand Maryland's core collection to something like 15 million volumes and allow the University's libraries to focus on identifying and digitizing the unique items buried in the stacks, Steele says in the broadcast.

Re: Her Approach

When searching for information at Maryland, Steele says libraries should be "Stop one, one stop."

"There's a lot for librarians to do and much of it is in partnership with our students and faculty."

Students want to use online technologies for their research, Steele says. Technological changes are also altering the way faculty members do their own research. There's a "real strong role for libraries in partnering with faculty," Steele says.

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