More than books

     Recently, I started a new job as the Digital Resources Librarian at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more on that read this post. Many people have asked me what does a Digital Resources Librarian do?  Many people think I take print books and digitize them. Well, that would be a nice thing to do but I doubt Rick Warren and John Piper would appreciate me making illegal copies of their books. Although, strangely enough we do have a department that is scanning books in the public domain for Logos.
    
     Well, in the three weeks that I have been at SWBTS I have added 170,000 ebooks. These are mostly new scholarly ebooks published within the past five-10 years. Although 30,000 of them are books from the 14th-early 20th centuries that are in the public domain. However, most of those are hard to find. There are more ebooks to come within the next few weeks. When I told someone here about all the ebooks that I was adding he said, "Sounds like you will work yourself out of your job." And of course I am thinking, "Have you met my boss?" Dr. K will always have something for me to do. He is a great visionary.

    I will also be supervising the digitization of our dissertations and chapel tapes in order to place them into an institutional repository. It will be great to have SWBTS publications and history saved for future generations. I will also be adding lots of reference, theological, and music databases to SWBTS. My coworkers and I will also be giving a much needed update to our library's website within the next few weeks.

    Since, I manage digital content some people might think that I do not value print books. The opposite is true. I believe that their is great value in print books. However, in order for libraries to stay relevant, useful, and provide good service to their patrons, they must go beyond the print book. Librarians should be excited by thought of adding e-books to their collection. How could they not want to help out online and distance students? SWBTS has students all over the world. It is apart of my responsibility to make them into great researchers. However, they can not do research if there is nothing for them.

   In actuality, I am just like a "real librarian".  A librarian means that you do more than shelve books. Librarians market through social media, help students with writing(so fortunate for a writing center), assist with computer skills, and the list goes on. Librarians are advocates for our patrons. We fight for the users (just like Tron). Our job is to make them into better researchers and citizens. I want to help do this through the adding of digital content.

    We plan on adding a lot of programs for our patrons. I got a couple things I would like to try. I know one thing we are for sure is having professors come to the library to give talks on their books and research interests. We hope that by doing this we can start to make the library a place where ideas are exchanged and form a sense of community.

    One thing that I look forward to is attending student events and letting the students know that I am here to help them, even if it is not regarding a digital issue. I want our students to be comfortable coming into the library and asking me questions. I want our library to become a major hub on campus for students.

Here are some pictures of SWBTS librarians at student events this semester.

Dodgeball Tournament Left to Right Top Row: Dr. K, Jeff,  and me Left to Right Bottom Row:Annetta, Tiffany, Sarah, and Maria (Picture by Donna Kubic)

Tiffany Norris, our public service librarian, talking with a student at New Student Orientation (Picture by Craig Kubic)

 

Me in the Face in Hole of Martin Luther at the Dodgeball Tournament (Picture by Tiffany Norris)