A Message from the New Dean of Cheng Library, Dr. Edward Owusu-Ansah Dean Owusu-Ansah shares his thoughts on the role and value of the academic library. Dr. Edward Owusu-Ansah, Dean of Cheng Library Summarizing the results of a 2002 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) survey of members on what they perceived to be the most pressing issues of concern to the field of academic librarianship, Lee W. Hisle, Vice President of Information Services and Librarian of the College at Connecticut College observed the need to define, defend and actualize the role and place of the library in the academic enterprise. Hisle noted in an article entitled “Top issues facing academic libraries: A report of the Focus on the Future Task Force” (College & Research Libraries News 63.10): “Librarians are dedicated to maintaining the importance and relevance of the academic library as a place of intellectual stimulation and a center of activity on campus. . . . We must find ways to promote the values, expertise, and leadership of the profession throughout the campus to ensure appreciation for the roles librarians do and can play.” The values and expertise of the profession are demonstrated daily in the actions and commitment of Cheng Library’s faculty and staff. They are embedded in their tradition of organizing and disseminating information, creating and perfecting the tools and systems for knowledge organization and dissemination, supplying the personal support for access and use of such organized (and increasingly less organized) information and knowledge, and assuming the responsibility for instructing users on how to effectively and independently navigate, find and use the information and knowledge they need. Cheng librarians also honor the enduring practice of collaborating with classroom faculty, a practice that has remained prudent ever since Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested in the 1840's the need for an appointment of a “professor of books” to support a liberal education. The proliferation of colleges that followed the Morrill Federal Land Grant Act of July 2, 1862 and the adoption in the United States, around the same period, of the German educational model emphasizing research and independent study made such an idea even more attractive. Many librarians in the period emerged from the ranks of subject faculty, while subject faculty performed librarian duties by teaching topics such as the history of the book, library organization, and bibliography. Eventually, growth in size and complexity of libraries would put a gradual end to this creative solution. But a realization in the 1920's and 1930's that undergraduates were ill prepared for individual study would bring librarians and subject faculty together again in a collaboration that continues to this day. Cheng librarians explore on an ongoing basis how to make such collaborations more effective and the resulting experiences more beneficial for students and faculty. In a 2010 report prepared for the ACRL entitled “Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report,” Megan Oakleaf implored college and university librarians to ask and answer some fundamental questions: how does the library help the institution admit the strongest possible students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; how does it contribute to student learning, retention, graduation, and excellence; how does it contribute to faculty teaching and research productivity; and how does it contribute to overall institutional reputation and prestige? These are important questions and perspectives that move libraries from traditional input measures of value to the prevailing outputs and outcomes approach in higher education. This reinforces a perception of higher education as a milieu for the interplay of the activities and relationships that facilitate knowledge transfer, acquisition, and reproduction. It is a perception that suggests colleges and universities are best served when they acknowledge the close and interdependent relationship between their teaching-learning efforts and the knowledge organization, transfer, and navigation functions at the heart of the services and expertise of their libraries. Your diligent library faculty and staff at the Cheng Library of William Paterson University have been seriously engaging these issues and are committed to creating even greater value in enhancing their library’s role and contributions to the academic enterprise. They have embraced not just the idea of demonstrating their existing value, but have also gone a step further in their aspiration to deliver even greater value. They communicate a clear message, one that says: we know it is truly not about how valuable we are, but rather how we can become even more valuable to our institution and its deeply enlightening charge to positively transform lives. I am privileged to be with a dedicated group of individuals here at Cheng Library who embrace this charge daily and look forward to collectively enhancing the contribution of the library to the success of the university, its students, and all within the institution who share that vision and purpose. I am excited to be at an institution whose President exhorts the campus community (“Address to Faculty and Staff - September 2015”) to “continue to grow and evolve to make the greatest impact on our students.” By all indications, the library at William Paterson is committed to continuing to grow and evolve to be as impactful as it can be. Edward Owusu-Ansah Dean of Cheng Library November 08, 2015
