The Agenda - Faculty and Staff Newsletter

Tag: university librarian

  • Serving the Post-Pandemic University

    It has been eight months since the university moved online and it is still difficult to believe that it is real. The sudden change that we experienced is gradually transitioning to a new normal, along with the insight that it is unlikely that we will ever return to the operations that we left in April. We are beginning to understand that we have the opportunity to build a future that combines the best of the past with the elements of our current environment that work well.

    In a blog post related to the pandemic, Lorcan Dempsey writes about the ways in which the pandemic is accelerating changes in library collections that previously had been slowly evolving. Dempsey discusses three pandemic effects that have contributed to this acceleration and will shape our environment going forward:

    • Budget reductions and the possibility that recovery will not come quickly
    • The rapid shift to online learning and research that most likely will only be partially reversed
    • The need for libraries to visibly and proactively align their services with the mission of the university

    As we develop strategies, it is imperative that we continue to look closely at how these pandemic effects are changing both higher education in general and Rutgers in particular, to try to discern how we use our strengths in the new environment. Some collection-related trends that I believe will be most relevant for us include:

    • The need to advance undergraduate student success. Student success is a critical element for the future of Rutgers. We have seen that—perhaps surprisingly—certain courses like traditionally large lectures can actually work better in an online format, creating more opportunities for participation and engagement than would previously be possible. We also know that students and their families are facing unprecedented financial struggles because of the pandemic, and the economic ramifications of the virus are still not even fully understood. I expect that these factors will cause the delivery of some of the undergraduate curriculum to change, even after it is safe to return to classroom settings. Accordingly, we should expand our efforts to replace traditional textbooks with open and affordable information resources. We have been successful in this area with OAT and Leganto, but we should be asking ourselves what this could mean for how we develop our collections, offer instruction, and participate in shared activities moving forward.
    • The continued erosion of the scholarly communication system. Academic libraries have worked on multiple fronts to develop new models of scholarly communication that center the researcher and the scholarship rather than the publisher. Fueled by the success of the University of California system in breaking the Big Deal, for the first time libraries are seriously considering large-scale cancellation of packages as viable option. Publishers, in collaboration with libraries, have responded with transformative license agreements that may simply shift who pays for publications without solving the underlying problem of unsustainable costs. Library budgets have also supported other forms of academic publishing. Over the past few decades, libraries have systematically reduced the number of monographs purchased from university presses, creating—for all but a few large presses—the need for substantial university subsidies. Now scholarly associations are facing a similar future. Together, these changes represent substantial shifts in the scholarly communication environment and will require responses much broader than a single library. As such, we should join our institutional partners in continuing to advocate for a sustainable and open ecosystem of publication, one that recognizes and rebalances the contributions that authors, institutions, and publishers make.
    • The rise of multiple formats. Libraries have always dealt with multiple formats, and this trend only continues to grow. In addition to print and online journals and books, we also provide access to multiple forms of audio, video, data, and other media. Print continues to be an essential part of our collections; however, the rapid shift online has exposed the costs of acquiring and managing print collections and has changed the calculations that determine what format is optimal. Moving forward, we should look carefully at how we optimize the Libraries’ collection budget to provide access to content, balancing the diverse needs of the various disciplines with overall trends and preferences toward the use of digital media.

    Taken together, I see these trends pushing us further in the direction of interdependence and collaboration among libraries. For instance, the cancellation of “Big Deals” requires unprecedented levels of collaboration and reliance on borrowing networks. Strong and established partnerships with PALCI, BTAA, and VALE position us well in this environment, as do our membership with HathiTrust and leadership in the BTAA Collective Collection initiative. As we invest in these efforts, we will be forced to navigate the tradeoffs between local control versus participating in shared activities at the consortial level to achieve efficiencies of scale in purchasing, licensing, and sharing resources.

    At this moment, we have the opportunity to look more holistically at our collections, to ask important questions about our priorities and approach, and to begin charting a course forward that will help us address not only the difficulties we are facing in the immediate present, but also the shifting landscape of scholarly communication and higher education more broadly moving into the future. We have an informed and engaged library faculty who can share their insights and expertise with discipline-specific perspectives on these issues, as well as a faculty planning committee who are tasked with helping the Libraries develop a more focused long-term vision that will allow us to flourish in the face of the many challenges before us. It may be difficult, but with the willingness and flexibility to adapt to a rapidly changing environment, the courage to make bold decisions, and a genuine commitment to deep collaboration (both within the Libraries and across our many external partnerships), I am confident that we can position ourselves to provide excellent service to the post-pandemic university.

  • Introducing Our New Values and Principles

    In the last issue of the Agenda, I wrote about the role of our Values and Principles and reflected a bit on the primacy of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion among them.

    Now that the final version has been posted publicly to our website—you can find them here or by navigating to About > Mission, Vision, & Strategic Plan on the Libraries’ homepage—I wanted to take some time to discuss the changes that Cabinet made.

    You will see that this document is not considerably different from what was initially recommended to us by the Values and Principles Taskforce. However, we thought it was important to add some prefatory remarks to describe the function of these values and principles within our organizational culture and explain the order in which they are listed:

    Rutgers University Libraries’ values and principles inform our efforts to support and enrich the instructional, research, and public service missions of Rutgers University. Our values represent our core beliefs, while each of the supporting principles describes how these values can and should be manifested in our day-to-day work. Serving as a compass to guide our interactions and decision-making, these elements differ from our annual priorities, which describe the “what” of our work rather than the “how” and “why.”
    We also acknowledge the difficult truth that not all of these values fully reflect our current reality. For this reason, we have chosen to foreground our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in recognition that we must do more to create a workplace that embraces individuals with a diversity of backgrounds, identities, and roles. Moving forward, we pledge to strive toward these standards of thought and behavior so that we may become an organization distinguished by a culture of fairness, respect, and opportunity for all.

    From the perspective of our leadership group, it is especially helpful to have these values and principles in place at this moment, when we are tasked with making difficult decisions related to budgetary reductions while continuing to provide excellent library service, all despite the challenges and uncertainties of the ever-shifting environment created by the pandemic. With this document as our “North Star,” we can continually look inward, examine our thoughts and behaviors, and make sure we are living up to the standards we have formally set forth.

    We should also not shy away from the fact that these values and principles are in some ways aspirational, particularly when it comes to our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. While we have made some strides in this area over the years through various programs, policy changes, and other activities, there is still work that remains to be done. Acknowledging our current situation is an important first step for us, as is the work that will be undertaken by the newly formed DEI Committee.

    Please do take the time to read back over these values and principles and reflect on how they can be brought to bear on your own day-to-day work and in your interactions with patrons and colleagues. Remember, as an organization, we have all contributed to the development of these ideals—and it is now our shared responsibility to collectively embody them.

  • Reflecting on Our Values and Principles

    As I’m sure you’ve seen in your email or the Cabinet minutes, the Libraries’ Values and Principles Taskforce recently completed its work and issued a final recommendation to Cabinet for consideration. We are still in the process of finalizing our values and principles and will post them to our website soon—but in my mind, this work could not have come at a better time, as the COVID pandemic, the shift to online-only, and now, planning for the phased return to our buildings, have all forced us to take a step back and determine what is core to library service.

    Our values and principles are different from our goals and priorities. The latter identify “what” we do, while the former describe the “how” and “why.” When these are finalized, we will have a set of ideals that we can use to guide our decision-making in the future—and in some ways, they have already begun to do so. For example, at the last Cabinet meeting, during which we discussed the taskforce’s recommendation to us, we decided to move the value of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) to the top of the list. This was a recognition of the importance of this value to us as a leadership group and an organization, as well as an acknowledgment of the reality that we have work to do in this area. Our first step forward is charging a new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, which will take stock of our current environment in order to guide and recommend processes within the Libraries that embrace DEI. As a reflection of our ongoing commitment to this value, the DEI Committee will be a permanent group designed to provide continuing guidance on these issues, not a working group tasked with producing a single report or planning a one-off training.

    Of course, this is only one example of how our values and principles can serve as a compass for us. Moving forward, we should consistently refer to them as a guide when there are hard decisions to make or difficult conversations to have. When we embrace these values—DEI, Inquiry, Access, Service, and Collaboration—with the intent of truly living them, we can be confident in our ability to move forward in a way that meaningfully advances the missions of the Libraries and the university.

    I would once again like to thank the members of the taskforce—Mina Ghajar, Tom Glynn, Samantha Kannegiser, Elizabeth Surles, and Geoffrey Wood—for their extraordinary work. Their job was certainly not an easy one, and the way in which they sought input from faculty and staff across the Libraries was admirable. I encourage you to review our values and principles once they are posted and reflect on how you can embody them in your own day-to-day work.

  • Recapping State of the Libraries 2020

    Thanks to everyone who attended State of the Libraries on Wednesday. We had over 200 folks join the meeting, and I’m so glad you all found the time to be there even with the competing demands of work and home. It was no replacement for our traditional in-person gathering, but it was nice to feel a sense of togetherness despite the circumstances and our physical distance.

    If you haven’t had a chance to yet, I encourage you to view the poster presentations prepared by our colleagues from across the Libraries:

    It is so inspiring to view these and reflect on all the good work that has been done over the last year, as well as how we are preparing for the work that lies ahead. There will be no shortage of challenges in the year to come, but with all the creativity and dedication on display through these presentations, I know we are well-equipped to handle whatever comes our way.

    If you’d like to review them, you can view the slides from all the presentations on our staff resources site or a recording of the entire event on YouTube.

    As you might imagine, a lot of activity happened behind the scenes to make sure everything went smoothly. Special thanks to Kalaivani Ananthan, Matt Badessa, Tracey Meyer, Joann Parrone, Ed Smith, and the Major Events Committee—Elsa Alves, Matt Bridgeman, Ann Marie Latini, Erica Parin, Tonie Perkins, Jennifer Reiber, and Daphne Roberts—for their support.

    We also received some great actionable feedback that we will incorporate into our future virtual gatherings, so thanks to everyone who provided thoughtful comments via the feedback form.

    A theme that emerged from all of yesterday’s presentations was collaboration, and State of the Libraries was just another example of what we can accomplish when we all work together with a common goal and sense of purpose. I hope we can carry forth some of those lessons and apply them to our work moving forward. In the coming months, it’ll be more important than ever to identify the areas where we can leverage our shared interests and maximize our impact on the university community.

  • Kicking Off another Planning Cycle

    It’s March, which means that another planning cycle is getting into full swing. At the Cabinet retreat tomorrow, we will begin discussing the 2020–2022 local priorities that have been developed by the directors. You can read them yourself on our Annual Planning and Priorities page: Camden, Newark, New Brunswick, RBHS.

    Over the past several planning cycles, information control has been among our top priorities as a system. This was based on feedback we received in the 2016 LibQUAL+ survey, which indicated we had room for improvement in this area in particular. As you know, this led to a whole suite of changes, not the least of which was the implementation of QuickSearch. We’ve also added extensive backfiles in recent years, working to address gaps in our collections so that they better meet the needs of Rutgers researchers. It has been a lot of hard work, but signs point to it paying off. The 2019 LibQUAL+ results, for instance, coupled with indicators like the drop in ILL numbers, give us reason to believe that we have made significant improvements when it comes to information control. This is a huge achievement for us, because it’s where our users indicate that they have the highest expectations for library service.

    That said, it isn’t entirely surprising to see that information control is becoming less of a focus area in some of the plans for this cycle. Of course, this doesn’t mean that this aspect of our work is any less important—it just means that we’ve laid an effective foundation and are ready to build toward new things.

    It is important that we take a moment to congratulate ourselves for this amazing accomplishment. Having a strong information control foundation allows us to build new services that will be both scalable and robust. These services fall into a category that we are calling in our priorities information management.

    Information management will be the organizing theme for many of our new initiatives in the coming years. One such area is our support for scholarly communication, and I wrote in my last post about Esploro and how it will strengthen our ability to provide open access to articles and data. We also see local initiatives in this cycle’s plans such as the Health Sciences Libraries’ pursuit of research information management services, Newark’s revitalization of the open access Journal of Jazz Studies, New Brunswick’s development of bibliometrics, or Camden’s creation of digital projects based on undergraduate and graduate student research. These are all encouraging signs that the work we’ve done is opening up new possibilities for how we serve the scholarly communities on our respective campuses, and I’m excited that we’re finally at the point where we can pursue these sorts of activities.

    My next Agenda post will be in May, and by then we’ll have had a chance to review the local plans and determine which priorities require central support. We’ll then begin finalizing the plans based on the capacity of our infrastructure and which priorities will move the most people forward. It’s an exciting time of year as the work on our horizons comes into sharper focus, and I look forward to exploring all the possibilities with Cabinet. But it’s also an occasion to reflect on how far we’ve come, and for that I have all of you to thank.

  • Looking Forward to 2020

    Welcome back! I hope you’re all feeling rested and rejuvenated from a well-deserved winter break.

    As I mentioned in my holiday email last month, I am so impressed by the amount of work we were able to accomplish last year. None of the achievements I chose to highlight was the result of a cookie-cutter project. Each of them required hard work, creative problem solving, and deep collaboration across the library system and with local campus partners. I know it isn’t always easy, but when these things come together, the impact is felt by students and faculty across the university. Thank you again for all your good work in 2019.

    As we turn our collective attention to 2020, I’d like to kick off the New Year by sharing some fantastic news. We have received our official FY21 budget awards and I am happy to report that we have received full support for salary increases and collection inflation, exceeding our expectations for funding in both these areas. Moreover, this funding is not representative of what was awarded to other cost pool units across the university. Simply put, this means that all our hard work is paying off. It’s a strong vote of confidence for the Libraries and the direction in which we’re headed, and I’m proud that we’ve received this recognition of our importance to Rutgers students and faculty.

    I’m glad that we will continue this momentum and hit the ground running this year with several impactful, large-scale projects. One such undertaking is the redesign of our website. While this project is still in its early stages, we have contracted with a vendor that will be performing the work. A web group is being convened to manage the project internally, establishing a timeline and benchmarks and communicating progress with the rest of our colleagues. The first step of the redesign is a discovery phase that includes surveying site visitors to learn more about their goals and experiences. This is another project that will draw on the expertise of many of us across the Libraries, and I look forward to following its progress as we continue to cater our services to meet the unique needs of our local communities.

    Another important project for us is Esploro. One of the priorities that arose from our last planning cycle was to implement an information management solution that will allow us to support the university’s open access policy in a sustainable manner, and Esploro represents a huge step toward meeting that goal. Esploro automates the management of research output—including capture and direct deposit—and helps streamline the process of depositing the results of scholarship into SOAR. It integrates directly with our library system and leverages one of the largest indexes of scholarly research available in order to ensure the broadest possible capture. Because it automatically harvests scholarly work done by Rutgers faculty, Esploro should give us a more comprehensive repository of Rutgers scholarship than we have with our current, purely manual deposit process. It will also help us better partner with the Office of Research & Economic Development by providing them with data on faculty output and productivity that can be used when pursuing research grants or steering potential industry partners toward relevant faculty experts. With projects like this, is it encouraging for me to see how the foundations we’ve laid over the last several years open up new possibilities for us moving forward. Adding a tool like Esploro builds on the work that groups like the Ex Libris Implementation Team have done in the past, and allows us to deliver value-added services that uplift the entire Rutgers community.

    Of course these are only a couple examples of the many exciting projects we have slated for 2020, but I hope they serve as compelling illustrations of all the progress we’re making. I look forward to another productive year ahead!

  • “Sticky Interdependence” and the BIG Collection

    Earlier this semester, my fellow BTAA library directors and I issued a joint statement publicly committing to an interdependent future and introducing the idea of the BIG Collection.

    This is a strategic and coordinated approach to sustaining the scholarly content held in our collections and enhancing our users’ path from discovery to delivery of that content. The initiative draws on the analysis of collective collection opportunities conducted by Lorcan Dempsey in the report Operationalizing the BIG Collective Collection: A Case Study of Consolidation vs Autonomy, which I have discussed in previous issues of the Agenda.

    Planning for this initiative is underway with the appointment of three committees to scope, plan, and realize the necessary programmatic components. These include the Content Committee, which will identify strategies for managing existing print collections and more strongly coordinating collections for optimal distribution; the Applications Committee, which is responsible for improving network fulfillment and creating unified and coherent discovery of BTAA collections; and the Enterprise (Steering) Committee, which works in the areas of strategy and policy and is responsible for oversight of the BIG Collection.

    As co-chair of the Applications Committee and a member of the Enterprise Committee, I am deeply invested in the success of the BIG Collection initiative and committed to the vision that it represents. This vision—“of a more codependent system in which research libraries pledge to preserve individual collection areas, allowing other institutions to allocate spending elsewhere”—as it was described in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education—comes from the understanding that the time has come to move away from models based on non-productive competition. Throughout the BTAA, library directors have embraced the idea that you don’t get big by making someone else small, and it will take a real, lasting commitment to collaboration for us to successfully chart a course forward in the current information landscape. My colleague James Hilton at Michigan calls this idea “sticky interdependence” and I think this phrase captures nicely the imperative for us not just to work together, but to do so in a way that is sustainable in the long term.

    At Rutgers, we are well positioned to contribute to this sort of initiative because of our experience building interdependence between the four campuses. As you know, our planning process helps us determine the best ways to work together and how to leverage shared resources so that they have the greatest impact on the most users. It has also helped us understand how more purposeful coordination can lead to a more effective system overall. This is the experience that I plan to bring to my work on the BIG Collection committees.

    Simply put, in any networked environment, all members have to rise up together. Nobody can do it alone. This is as true for the libraries at Rutgers as it is for the institutions across the BTAA.

    In our statement on the BIG Collection, we emphasize the importance of intentional, collaborative action that advances a shared mission and ensures the collective good. We have learned this lesson first-hand at Rutgers, and now we are seeing the idea take hold at a larger scale. I believe very strongly that this cooperative, interdependent future is the best way forward—for Rutgers, for the Big Ten, and for all the students and scholars that our institutions collectively serve.

  • University Librarian’s Report – July 2019

    I’d like to start my article this issue by thanking all of you who attended our State of the Libraries meeting in June. It was a great opportunity for us to network with colleagues we don’t often get to see in person, celebrate our collective accomplishments from the past year, and look forward to the challenges ahead. I hope you found it a useful and productive event.

    For those of you who stayed behind, I invite you to review the slides from my presentation as well as the videos from the poster session below.

    As I reflect back on Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s presentation about Generous Thinking, a key takeaway for me was the challenges inherent to developing academy-driven, community-supported infrastructure that provides open access to scholarly material in a sustainable manner. In order to realize this vision, academic institutions need to commit in earnest to the idea of collaboration, and take seriously a sense of shared responsibility to our collective enterprise.

    Deep collaboration is difficult. It requires trading control and specialization for efficiency. In a recent short essay appropriately titled “Library Collaboration is Hard; Effective Collaboration is Harder,” Lorcan Dempsey summarizes his recent presentations and blog posts and ends with the recommendation that “There should be active, informed decision-making about what needs to be done locally and what would benefit from stronger coordination or consolidation within collaborative organizations.” At Rutgers, we collaborate all the time, every day, all day. Nearly every project that we undertake involves collaboration across separate parts of our complex organization. We have talked about the importance of a collaborative approach in other contexts as well, such as Dempsey’s notion of the collective collection and how the continuum of consolidation applies to the Libraries’ services framework.

    Recently, we’ve seen the fruits of collaboration bear initiatives like CADRE, the shared big data gateway we’ve partnered with Indiana University and others to develop, which is further evidence of what is possible when institutions work together to address common needs. We are also exploring a transformative license agreement of Oxford Scholarship Online backfiles and frontlists, the terms of which were negotiated by PALCI. Even more opportunities, such as shared infrastructure for journal publishing, are on the horizon as well, thanks to our membership in the Big Ten Academic Alliance.

    With these examples in mind, it becomes clear to me that forward-thinking academic institutions need to be open to participating in these new, cooperative models in order to maximize our impact. And I believe the way forward for all libraries—including our own—is to accept this challenge to collaborate deeply across institutional boundaries. As we know from experience, there are bound to be some tradeoffs, and compromises will have to be made. But only by committing to working together in a meaningful way can we truly advance our mission of contributing to the public good.

  • University Librarian’s Report – May 2019

    The last several months have been a flurry of activity. In addition to the day-to-day demands of a busy spring semester, it’s also the most planning-intensive period of the year, as we assess our standing at the close of the current fiscal year and plan in earnest for FYs 2020 and 2021.

    I received a lot of feedback during town hall season and in continued conversations with the library directors that we could do a better job of clarifying the different stages in the planning process and of describing central’s role in supporting local priorities. In an organization like ours, it is definitely a complex puzzle and it can be difficult to see how all the pieces fit together.

    We’ve made some updates to the University Librarian page on our staff resources website to provide a resource that brings more transparency to the planning process and illustrates how local and central priorities work together. The page includes a broad overview of the annual planning process as well as links to the local units’ plans and a list of major central infrastructure projects. Hopefully this will help demonstrate how we prioritize our collective work, and I invite you to review this information and continue to provide feedback to me and the library directors.

    At the Cabinet retreat in April, we had very productive discussions about the unit plans and the different tradeoffs we’d have to consider between local priorities and central capacity to support those activities. It became clear to me that we’re becoming better at navigating these conversations and seeing the local plans not as competing sets of priorities, but as opportunities to identify the activities that will bring the most benefit to the most users, while still allowing us to serve our individual communities in ways that will best suit their unique needs.

    As we move toward the next retreat in May, during which we’ll finalize our local plans and our Librarieswide goals and metrics, I’m optimistic that we will continue to build toward an environment where the “One Library – Four Missions” approach can flourish.

  • We Are Not Alone – Thoughts on the BTAA Meeting

    We Are Not Alone – Thoughts on the BTAA Meeting

    I know that we spend a lot of time focused on building infrastructure. Our top priorities involve undergraduate success and strengthening information control to ensure that our users have efficient, reliable access to information resources.

    I just got back from a Big10 meeting at Purdue. At the meeting, we reviewed the results of a survey of the BTAA library directors’ top priorities for future collaborative activities. Each director picked three areas of interest. The results:

    • Collection Management 54%
    • Student Success Measures 46%
    • OER 46%
    • Data Management/Curation 38%
    • Analytics/Assessment 38%
    • Open Access 15%

    The remaining four items: Special Collections, Professional Development, Digital Humanities, and Library Publishing all were 8%.

    In another part of the survey, the directors listed the most important BTAA initiatives as Discovery to Delivery, Collections Infrastructure and Management, and Student Success.

    Although these priorities and initiatives do not represent the most important work of the libraries, the selections do say something about initiatives that are most effective when done ‘at scale’ with the broader community. As I listened to my colleagues share their experiences and challenges, it struck me that we are not the only research library that is focusing on basics.

    In a meeting back here at Rutgers, Judy Cohn brought up the NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition. This report from the New Media Consortium looks at trends in libraries, technology, and education to imagine what is on the five-year horizon for academic and research libraries. It is produced in collaboration with University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), ETH Library, and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). It identifies trends, challenges, and developments in technology that will impact how libraries plan to meet the needs of their users, how we function day to day and year to year, and the services that will be in highest demand. The first of the top 10 highlights listed was:

    Libraries remain the gatekeepers to rich tapestries of information and knowledge. As the volume of we resources increases, libraries are charged with finding new ways to organize and disseminate research to make it easier to discover, digest, and track.

    It was surprised to see that improving ‘information control’ was featured so prominently in the report. It seems that academic and research libraries have a renewed focus on the fundamentals and are redesigning infrastructure so that it better meets the changes in the environment. I know there are times when we feel like we are behind; however, it appears that we are actually in sync with many of our peers.

    Over the next week, we will have meetings with Office of Information Technology and the Office of Research and Economic Development to discuss potential collaboration on research and digital humanities infrastructure. This will move us closer to another one of our priorities: identifying and communicating our role in the broader research environment of Rutgers. We are making progress!

    While we are moving fast, our activities continue to be guided by the expertise and research of our colleagues. There are several examples of this that come to mind, all with librarywide participation. The Discovery Working Group has offered a model of how to harness data and best practices to make impactful changes in how our users discover and access collections via our website. Their work continues to propel us forward, even as the Ex Libris Implementation Team works to create nimble and knowledgeable teams to accommodate the anticipated workload over the next 7 months. And the Website Improvement Team is rolling out an impressive, incremental website refresh derived from extensive user research and analytics. The work that we are doing now will pay off in the coming years with flexible and easy to manage systems. It is my hope that these changes will make it easier for you to do the important work that you do.

    As we move into the holiday season, I would like to thank you for your dedication and patience. It has been a difficult few years of change in response to the new environment, but, thanks to your efforts, these challenges continue to be met with creativity, hard work, and shared purpose. Your dedication to Rutgers, our students, and our faculty is impressive and collectively, we are creating libraries—digital and physical—that encourage learning and exploration and support to the success of our users. I am very grateful to count you all as my colleagues and I wish you and your families the happiest of holidays and all the best for the New Year!

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