Rebirth: Libraries move into the digital age

Books didn't lure Cynthia Henry, an energetic librarian in her mid-30s, to her profession. Technology did.

"I don't know if I would have been a librarian had I really been cataloguing in the old way and just pulling books and stuff," said Henry, a social sciences librarian at Texas Tech.

"You would never believe how much information is out there. And you have to be on your toes," said Henry, who loves building Web sites, buying electronic books and keeping Tech libraries swimming in a sea of change.

The change is twofold: as Tech libraries have adapted to a digital age, so have its librarians, they say.

Shrinking role of books

With about 3 million visitors per year, Tech's main library, a six-floor behemoth in the middle of the campus, is the university's heart: the most frequented building on campus. There's no doubt it has transformed in the last decade.

Let's begin with its books, those bundles beloved by so many academicians.

• Over a span of about seven years, Tech's book-buying budget shrunk from about $1 million annually to less than $400,000, said the university's dean of libraries, Donald Dyal. This applies to physical books only. Tech has been a growing collection of e-books, its librarians say.

• Also in the last seven years or so, circulation of books has radically dropped from about 500,000 volumes per year to about 200,000, Dyal said.

But as Tech librarians have discovered, books are no longer a library's lifeline. Their role in university libraries is quickly shrinking, a fact wired students have embraced, Tech librarians say. Yet, the main library is more popular than ever, Dyal said. About 700,000 people, he said, came into the building in 2001, the year he accepted his deanship. Now, the number of visitors is in the millions.

"You may sit there and say, 'Wait a minute, if you have an Internet connection, you don't have to go the library.' Well ... libraries are not about a warehouse of stuff physically sitting in a place. Libraries are about an ambience of study, of discovery, of thought, of social interaction," Dyal said.

At the Tech main library, scores of books have been rearranged to make room for computers, which now monopolize the main library's first floor. The university ramped up its e-book buying this year, letting its subject librarians purchase five e-books apiece, they said. The library has amassed nearly 300 databases, vast collections of information ranging from literature to science that faculty and students can access from the library or from home. It was one of the first in the nation to start replacing copy machines with paperless scanners, which let users copy and e-mail images rather than printing out reams of paper.

"The book," Dyal said, "has had a great run. It's been around for probably 3,000 years. It was portable. It was, most of the time, cheap. It was easy to use. But you know what? Something's come along that's more portable. It's cheaper and it's (easier) to use," said Dyal, himself an author of 11 books and a book collector.

"Ninety-nine point nine percent of all the transactions that happen with this library are done digitally," he said. "That's not an exaggeration."

Still, the library contains about 12 million books, which one librarian guessed aren't going anywhere. "Why would we give up materials that we already have?" Henry said.

Librarians are in the process of digitizing vast chunks of their collections, though, they said.

They've even tapped into social networking sites. They maintain MySpace and Facebook accounts that have, combined, accumulated more than 100 friends. The sites contain information about upcoming events and library resources. The Tech libraries' Web site also has a link where users can read short biographies of librarians.

"We're trying to reach our population where they're at," said Tech librarian Carrye Syma.

The new librarian

Like Henry, Syma, 29, is an Internet-saavy librarian. After an internship at Tech's main library, she decided to pursue a career in the field, rather than go to law school. Her husband, Jake Syma, is also a librarian. The couple met as interns at the Tech library and got their master's degrees in library science through an all-online program at the University of North Texas. Their 5-year-old daughter vows to enter the field one day, too.

From a computer lab in the library where Henry and Syma train students on how to use the library's digital resources, the two young librarians joked about slow-to-change stereotypes about librarians.

Henry dropped a career in social work to pursue her master's in library science.

"My mom, she's like 'Oh, you're gonna be a librarian? You'll have so much time to read.' I was like, 'Yeah, that's not what it's about,' " she said, laughing at the memory.

The profession was appealing to Syma because of the intense research side that comes with it, she said. It's an aspect of the job many aren't aware of, said Syma and other librarians, who describe themselves as oft-overlooked cogs in higher education.

Subject librarians such as Syma and Henry spend lots of time helping faculty members collect resources for their courses, but they also teach, attend conferences, publish and can earn tenure, in addition to staying abreast of constant innovations in the library world. They're considered faculty members at the university.

Thirteen subject librarians work at Tech. It's a diverse group, they said.

Sciences Librarian Arlene Paschel, 51, used to farm and sell farm equipment in the Panhandle.

"I was out on the farm and I was not computer literate," said Paschel, who began working at Tech 11 months ago.

She quickly learned, though, and now is devoted to helping other non-traditional students navigate a digital library.

"It's the best time ever to be a librarian. I love the technology, just being able to find things. When I first went to college ... it was a card catalog kind of thing. This makes it sooo much easier. Everything is just right there," she said.

Another plus: jobs in the field are plentiful, she said.

Older faculty seem to be the most resistant to the growing exchange of physical resources for digital ones, Tech librarians said.

Dyal has urged the campus community to look into digital textbooks for students, an option that could be much cheaper. So far, he's received little response from faculty, he said.

"The students are ready to go. The students wanted it to happen yesterday. They are already living in that world," he said.

They, he said, were "born digital."

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TEXAS TECH/New technology keeps librarians on their toes