Yes, the card catalog still exists. But the University Library is
moving toward the 21st century with digital maps, online databases, electronic
reading lists, and an outlet for a computer at every seat in the Reference
Room
Lighting up Firestone
by Ann Waldron
Yes, the card catalog still exists. But the University Library is
moving toward the 21st century with digital maps, online databases, electronic
reading lists, and an outlet for a computer at every seat in the Reference
Room
Some things don't change. Walk into Firestone Library and you still face Isamu Noguchi's small sculpture, "White Sun," on a pedestal. On the right, you can glimpse through glass doors the latest exhibition of Rare Books and Special Collections. On the left, a glass wall separates the lobby from the Reference Room.
But many things do change. The Reference Room has recently been completely renovated-with an outlet for a laptop computer at every seat in the room. In the lobby, behind the counter for employees who check users in and out, you can still glimpse the old card catalog on the left, but on the right, computers, set up to provide access to the online catalog of books acquired since 1980, have been in place for 15 years. The card catalog will soon be gone-information on its six million cards added to the online catalog.
Technology is booming in the library. Researchers can search through 700 scholarly journals electronically. In the Social Science Reference Center on A level, data librarians and statistical consultants help faculty and students tap into huge numerical databases. Some students no longer have to go to the Reserve Center on A level to find supplementary course reading-it's online. Software and hardware in the Geosciences and Map Library in Guyot Hall allow students to overlay a map with statistics to produce a visible analysis more colorful than any chart. Photographs from the Western Americana Collection and papyrus fragments from the Manuscript Collection are digitized and available online. A new computerized system for the catalogs is in the offing.
Does it sound as though Princeton has given up on the book and gone completely high-tech? Don't worry. The library has not turned its back on the printed page.
"The Princeton University Library will always be committed to the book," said Karin Trainer, University Librarian. "At the same time that an engineering librarian is helping a student navigate an enormous file of electronic data, Paul Needham [curator of the Scheide Library in Rare Books and Special Collections] is working with a medieval manuscript."
But the acquisition process has gotten more complex. "It's no longer as simple as just buying books and journals," said Trainer. The library's acquisitions budget has shifted, but Trainer said that between 90 and 95 percent of the money still goes for works on paper-books and journals-and microfilm.
Furthermore, circulation of books is zooming upward. Proliferating online indexes are getting easier to use, said Trainer, and they help users find books and articles-and increase circulation. Thus, electronics nourishes the use of books.
Trainer, who's been Librarian for three years, is happily leading the library into the uncharted territory of a new electronic century. With her youth, her stylish short haircut, her ready smile, and her enthusiasm for Princeton students, she's a great cheerleader for both traditional and groundbreaking ways of finding information. In the libraries, change is in the air, and the changes affect both books on paper and electronic materials.
Integrated systems
All four of the library's computer systems will soon be combined into a single, integrated system that will include catalogs, circulation information, acquisitions and journals, and invoices. The six million additions to the online catalog will be complete by the summer of 2000 and available through the Web instead of through Telnet. (The old physical card catalog will be moved from the first floor but kept in the library until everyone is sure that its information has been accurately transferred to the online catalog.)
"We have to move on acquisitions and our system that tracks journals now because of the Y2K problem," said Marvin Bielawski, deputy university librarian. "This fall, users can see what we have on order."
Electronic reserves
Librarians took the initiative on electronic reserves and started a pilot program last fall. Seven professors signed on and provided journal articles and book chapters to be digitized. Professors liked it, they said, because library staff did all the work. Paula Clancy, reserve librarian, saw the program as a chance to provide an opportunity for professors to use new technologies in teaching as well as an alternative access point for reserve material.
"We designed everything and built it from the ground up," said Eileen Henthorne, technical services special projects manager. Since many of the assigned readings are the same year after year, Henthorne points out, the material could be scanned once and saved.
In the spring semester, 12 professors signed up for electronic reserves, and this fall, as the pilot project begins a second year, 25 were expected to use it. Nobody who has tried it so far seems to dislike it.
"It was a no-brainer for the students," said Thomas Levin, cultural theoretician and associate professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, who taught an advanced seminar in literary theory. "They're used to these kinds of toys, although most of them did end up printing out the material. It was a total pleasure. I didn't have to organize a photocopied handout."
Students liked it because they could access the material on the computers in the dorm room at any time of day or night. In fact, at one point in the semester, the library found that 24 percent of the hits to the material came between midnight and 7 a.m., when the library was closed.
Some professors, not quite trusting the new technology, offered a photocopied packet as well as the electronic material. Mark Hansen, who was teaching an English course, Postmodern and Contemporary Culture, said he would not bother with the packet next time. "The packet is set in stone," he said. "I added a few readings to the electronic reserves after the semester began. I liked that flexibility."
Trainer predicts that eventually most faculty will want their reserves offered electronically.
Digital maps and geographic information
The Geographic Information Service is new at Princeton. Located in the Geosciences and Map Library in Guyot Hall, it "provides access to geospatial data, digital map services, and geographic information systems (GIS)." Translate this, and it means that here's where software, hardware, and geographic data can be found, along with a helping hand. Wangyal Shawa, a cartographer originally from Tibet who holds degrees in geography and library science, stands ready as GIS librarian to aid undergraduates, graduate students, and professors.
When Professor Gregory Van Der Vink found out last fall that Princeton had just started the GIS service, he modified his senior seminar on natural disasters (Geosciences 499) to exploit the technology. The result was enlightening. "We learned that the number of natural disasters-hurricanes and earthquakes-was not increasing and that the number of lives lost because of natural disasters was decreasing," said Van Der Vink. "But the costs of damage from disasters was increasing exponentially. Why?"
The students used county by county maps of California and Florida (sites of earthquakes and hurricanes) and entered census population and income data by zip codes, and information such as wind velocity for each county. They got in touch with insurance companies and got information on their rates in these counties, and called building inspectors in every county to get information on building codes. They formatted this information so they could overlay it on their maps. The result were brilliantly colored maps that showed at a glance that wealthy people were moving into high-risk areas, where a natural disaster would destroy more valuable real estate.
"They were wonderful students," said Van Der Vink. "They were so good that they went to Washington and showed their information to James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to the staff of the President's science adviser at the White House, and to a congressional subcommittee."
Other GIS users have come from engineering, urban planning, history, sociology, population studies, geology, evolutionary biology, and economic statistics.
For a senior thesis, one woman downloaded geospatial data on elevations, land use, soil, drainage basins, streams, and geology from New York City's Department of Environmental Protection Website to study the environmental impact on the city's watershed area. Another student took information about endangered species and correlated their location with elevation. Students overlaid aerial photographs with land use maps from a later period to show how land use has changed. Another student overlaid maps of toxic waste sites with figures on the incidence of breast cancer. History students used the technology to study changes in boundaries and migration patterns. "Somebody was even studying the relationship between rainfall and income in Thailand," Shawa said.
The United States government sends quantities of free geospatial data on CD-ROM to Federal Depository Libraries, including Princeton. Material from other countries is not so easy to acquire, but Princeton does have digital maps of Africa and the world.
Electronic journals
People can instantly search, download, and print out articles from the 700 scholarly journals stored electronically. Most are scientific journals, but the storehouse includes economics, literature, history, and sociology.
Like all research librarians, those at Princeton are concerned about the permanence of electronic material. New computers and software can't always read old tapes and disks that were prepared with earlier software on older machines. How can you preserve electronic archives for the future?
"Remember eight-inch floppy disks?" said Deputy Librarian Bielawski. "We don't have machines that can read them today. But most of the eight-inch floppies were converted. We're all worried about this; the National Archives struggles with the problem."
Many of the electronic journals are not actually owned by the library but are kept on servers maintained by publishers who license them to the library for use by students and faculty. In many cases, the library buys duplicate copies of journals-one on paper for backup and an electronic copy for researchers' convenience.
"How we archive electronic material is very important," said Trainer. "History of Science is an important discipline. Historians of science in the future will need to read today's scientific journals. We have an obligation to make our journals permanent."
Next, Trainer brings up material on paper. "On the other hand, preservation of paper requires human hands," she said. "We have the world's best collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald ['17] manuscripts. They're heavily used, and they're disintegrating. The Friends of the Library have financed the purchase of a spectrometer that enables us to analyze the composition of inks and paper. Ted Stanley, our professional conservator, has just the right hand-skills to use-and has the advantages of new technology."
Numeric databases
Consultants for Data and Statistical Services (DSS) have offices in the Social Sciences Reference Center in Firestone and assist undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty who tap into huge numeric databases through high-end desktop computers down the hall. (In the spring, these workstations are full, with lines waiting.)
"Half our users are from economics," said Paul Bern, a data services specialist for DSS. "Everybody that comes in-from economics, sociology, or politics-does something with numbers. They want census information, financial information, data on immigration, fertility-anything."
"At most libraries, the users of these huge databases would all be graduate students and faculty," said Trainer, "but at Princeton seniors working on theses do much the same kind of research that graduate students and professors do."
"A person comes in and wants to do a paper on how bank mergers affect stock prices of the banks," said Bern. "So they look at 100 banks, get the stock prices before they merged and after they merge. We have data that goes back to 1920 for every stock that was ever traded on a stock exchange. We help them find the banks they want, help them extract the information they want, and help them analyze it."
Bern says that Princeton has the most comprehensive data library in the country-"not the largest, but the most comprehensive."
Available databases include Compustat (how much a company spends on advertising, salaries, its stock prices, prices of its products), Bank's Crossnational Time Series (information on countries' land area, number of telephones, and how many miles of train tracks), CPS (population), GFS, (Government Finance Statistics), Berkeley Options Database (every single transaction of the Chicago Board of Trade), and various compilations of figures on health care, international finance, and social science statistics.
Digitizing special collections
At any given moment in any day, someone somewhere in the library is digitizing something, says Librarian Trainer. And even in the ivory tower-like quarters of Rare Books and Special Collections, holdings are scanned so that they can be available online.
Federal money is helping pay for scanning and digitizing Special Collections' papyrus holdings, including a tattered page by Demosthenes dating from the first century b.c.e.
Alfred Bush, curator of Western Americana, and a special collections assistant, Mura Craiutu, are digitizing some of the university's vast holdings in Native American photographs. "We've done about 300 photographs so far," said Bush, "and eventually 2,000 to 3,000 will be available online."
Bush points with horror to two pictures of Tom Torlino, both taken in 1885 by John Choate at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. The first shows Torlino as he arrived at the school-fresh-faced, eager, with long hair and big silver earrings. Then the second, "Tom Torlino Transformed," shows him with a short haircut, white folks' clothes, and a timid look on his face.
"They destroyed him," Bush said.
All sorts of photographs have been digitized, ranging from a later picture of Ira Hayes, the Pima who appeared in Joe Rosenthal's famous photo of raising the flag on Iwo Jima to a Ulli Steltzer photograph of women at Santa Clara Pueblo in 1970.
People visiting the library's Americana Website will find a group of small photos on the screen-rather like a contact sheet-so they can click on any image and get a larger version with the basic facts concerning the person. They can also search by subject for other photos that include, for instance, beaded jewelry, fringed costume, or tribe name.
Bush also oversees the scanning of the Garrett Collection of Manuscripts in Indigenous Middle American Languages. "It's the largest collection of Maya manuscripts in the United States," he said. "If all the others were assembled, this collection would still be bigger than all of them." Some manuscripts are in pictographs, some in Latin letters. Latin-American scholars, who are now able to see them for the first time, are excited.
"Everybody thinks of Rare Books and Special Collections as being Old World," said Bush. "But our holdings are unique, not just books that can be duplicated, so they need to go online."
Expanding library system
New branch libraries are in the works. The Friend Center for Engineering Education, now under construction, will house a brand-new engineering library; a new library to serve the Woodrow Wilson School and the Population Research Center will be built in the Wallace Social Sciences Building, also under construction.
The Gest East Asian Library is being renovated as part of the general overhaul of Palmer Laboratory to house the new campus center. The Near Eastern collection that's now in Gest will be moved to join other Near Eastern material in Firestone.
A feasibility study for the remodeling of Marquand Art Library has been authorized, and the architectural firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson, and Abbott will look at Firestone and provide a master plan for updating it to make it more convenient and more flexible for the future.
Joint storage facility
A new storage facility on the James Forrestal Campus will house little-used books and archives owned by Princeton, Columbia University, and the New York Public Library. Two or three modules will go up at first, with the number rising to as many as 15 buildings, each of which could store two million books. Buildings will be climate-controlled for optimum book preservation. At each of these insitutions, people can expect to request a book from the facility and receive it within 24 hours. "We hope that all the books from all three collections can be used easily by Princeton students and faculty," said Deputy Librarian Bielawski.
Most of the materials at the center will be older issues of journals, outdated monographs in fields such as business and finance, infrequently consulted archives and microfilms, and volumes kept for specialized research. The three universities expect to cooperate on finding ways to store and transmit digitally some of the works housed in the joint facility.
All in all, the book is holding its own at Princeton. Like all great libraries, Princeton has always been open to new technology. At one time, the card catalogs must have seemed a startling innovation.
Ann Waldron is a freelance writer living in Princeton.
The Art of preserving old books
Even as the library prepares for the 21st century, a small group of
conservators is working to preserve and restore the university's sizable
collection of older manuscripts. Ted Stanley, paper conservator and the
head of the Special Collections Conservation Unit (SCC), came to Princeton
in 1992 from the Library of Congress to create the SCC. He's been busy ever
since. "We're really backed up," Stanley says. "While our
collection obviously isn't as big as the Library of Congress, we have the
same breadth. We have all kinds of manuscripts . . . medieval, Islamic,
American. In fact, I found out when I got here that we have some things
that they don't-I thought that was a real kick."
Stanley stumbled onto his career after he graduated from art school and soon discovered that it was hard to pay the bills as an illustrator. He trained as a conservator at the Library of Congress, and in 1983 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study in Paris and Madrid before returning to the Library as a full-time conservator. For Stanley, who describes himself as a history buff, working with old manuscripts is a way of placing the past in context. Over his career, Stanley has worked on items as disparate as George Washington's commission in the Continental Army and the original battle orders for the Spanish Armada.
Scott Husby, the university's rare books conservator, plays John Tenniel to Stanley's Lewis Carroll. Husby's specialty is replacing and repairing book bindings-a career he began in 1972 after discovering a book on the subject in a used-book store. One of Husby's recent projects involved repairing the cover on a 400-year-old Hebrew Bible that Jonathan Edwards, the third president of Princeton, signed in the 1750s. Before coming to the university in 1992, Husby had owned his own private practice for 20 years, but soon after his arrival at Princeton he discovered that he had entered a different world. "I had been doing five or six books at a time for various clients," he recalls, "so I never saw the big picture. My first day the curator takes me in to the collection and says, 'This is it-200,000 volumes.' I was completely overwhelmed, but now I feel responsible for that whole collection."
-Wes Tooke '98
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