When Bill Garrity was promoted to university librarian in May, he brought with him 10 years of experience as о’ deputy university librarian and decades working in academic libraries.
Garrity has done a lot of work helping to navigate the о Library into the new century and digital age. When Shields reopened after COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, Garrity helped his team develop safe and flexible ways of working. He facilitated the expansion of the library’s services to students, faculty and researchers.
“Our team’s job is to connect people to the resources they need to teach, learn, and do for their work and research, whether those resources are print materials or digital sources,” explained Garrity, who is also vice provost of digital scholarship.
Garrity previously worked in academic libraries at University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth College before joining о in 2014.
“It’s so amazing to be here at one of the top universities in the world,” said Garrity. “To think that over the course of the trajectory of my career, I ended up here. I just feel so fortunate.”
What does a typical day look like for you?
I’m fundamentally responsible for hiring, cultivating, and mentoring the talent that works in the library, so I do a bit of that.
I also collaborate closely with different campus units to ensure the library can support their teaching and research initiatives. I work with each of the о deans and vice provosts to understand the work their departments do and how the library can support that work. My goal is for every person at о to be able to say that the library has helped or supported them in one way or another.
For example, the College of Engineering recently established a new Coffee Center. We, as the library, needed to understand what their research and educational focuses were going to be so that we could make sure that initiative had both the information and library staff expertise to support it. We corresponded with the faculty director of the Coffee Center, purchased and licensed the information resources the center needs, and evaluated our broader coffee-related collections to make sure we had materials addressing the wide range of disciplines represented in the center’s work. We also have materials about coffee from around the world, in over a dozen languages and spanning five centuries, in our Archives and Special Collections.
How has the role of campus libraries changed over time?
Student demand for checking out print books is declining, but the need for efficient access to trustworthy sources of information has never been greater. Whether you're a student sitting writing a paper in your dorm room or a faculty member in the field doing research, if you’re searching for digital books and journals online, it is the library that makes that possible. People are still using library resources, but now they’re doing so as much electronically as they are in-person or in print.
The library used to be a quiet place where students came to check out books or study silently. Now it’s a place where students come to study in groups, review lectures, or do other prep for courses.
What’s a fun fact about Shields Library?
Shields was built in four phases. The wing that faces the Quad was built in the late 1940s. The next wing was added in the early 1960s. Then the third wing was added in the late 1960s. The west wing, where everyone enters the library now, was built in 1990. Today’s students may find it hard to imagine, but what we now think of as the main entrance, near [Egghead sculpture] Bookhead, didn’t even exist for most of the library’s history.
I can almost carbon date alumni as to when they were students based on the door they remember as the entrance to the library. For example, in the early 1970s, the main entrance of the library faced east toward Sproul Hall, so people who used that entrance likely went to о around that time. But no matter what entrance you remember, we are always excited to welcome alumni back to visit!