Future of the Academic Library

Exterior of Stetson's duPont-Ball Library
Ryan_Susan
Using emerging technologies, Susan Ryan seeks to make Stetson’s duPont-Ball Library a showcase.

At least rhetorically, Susan Ryan, dean of duPont-Ball Library and Learning Technologies at Stetson University, often asks the question, “What does this library have that no other library has?”

“Learning Technologies” in the library’s name offers hints, but Ryan’s philosophies were on full display this summer at “Taking Our Seat at the Table: How Academic Librarians Can Help Shape the Future of Higher Education.” The special session, held in Orlando as part of the American Library Association’s Annual Conference & Exhibition, was sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries University Libraries Section.

Library administrators discussed how their institutions were looking ahead, with Ryan and the duPont-Ball Library taking a lead role.

Ryan highlighted Stetson’s 3-D printer curriculum as an “unexpectedly successful way that our library has taken a seat at the table.” She described how students need a wide skill set to advance in the high-tech global economy, and although plenty of libraries have 3-D printers, almost none have offered for-credit undergraduate courses in their use.

With clear communication to librarians and faculty about how they stand to benefit, a 3-D curriculum could be a good fit for many institutions, Ryan said. Also, she noted the curriculum has been such a success at Stetson — across diverse departments like chemistry, biology, mathematics, integrative health, art and music — that the library added two $25,000 Stratasys commercial-grade 3-D printers (one donated) to its existing lineup to keep pace with demand.

For Ryan, this isn’t new thinking. In a 2015 edition (Oct. 15) of Strategic Library, an e-newsletter on innovation, best practices and emerging trends, she co-wrote an article that posed, “What is a modern academic library if not a teaching and learning with technology unit?”

She went on to address how and why librarians, teaching faculty and administrators at Stetson have “embraced the role of the library in promoting emerging technologies as integrative teaching and learning tools.” (The article was co-written by W. Tandy Grubbs, Ph.D., chair of the chemistry department at Stetson, where under his leadership department faculty collaborated with librarians to establish a 3-D printing Innovation Lab in the library.)

Further, Ryan now seeks to make duPont-Ball Library a showcase, what she calls “doing libraries the right way.” On one side, such items as books, collections and archives will celebrate history. On other side, innovation and technology will take center stage.

“That’s the power of the modern library,” Ryan says. “It’s no longer just stacks of books that everybody has access to. There’s a place for that, certainly, but we have to think of information as so much more.”

– Michael Candelaria