FEATURE
Reimagining Libraries
By Julia Halprin Jackson
In the nearly 20 years since it became a joint library with the City of San José, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library has redefined the library experience for students, faculty and staff — and the greater community.
They say to never judge a book by its cover. How would one judge a library? San José State University’s King Library offers 475,00 square feet of books, research centers, special collections, collaborative spaces, access to more than 25 faculty librarians and seemingly endless technology.
And King Library’s resources do not stop there. When it opened in 2003, it became the first library in the United States to combine a major city and university library, making every collection and service available to all. Nearly two decades later, it sets an example of what a joint-use library can be.
Get a glimpse of what makes King Library unique below.
The Digital Humanities Center is a collaboration between SJSU's College of Humanities and the Arts and the King Library. Video: Courtesy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.
Digital Humanities
Is technology the answer to societal problems or a threat to humanity as we know it?
Digital humanities reinvents how the humanities and the arts relate to science, technology, engineering and math, says Katherine D. Harris, director of programming for the College of Humanities and the Arts. As a digital humanist herself, she adds that the discipline investigates the ethical, philosophical and humanitarian impact of technology on the world. That’s why the King Library makes the perfect home for SJSU’s Digital Humanities Center (DHC) for interdisciplinary research. Though the physical center is scheduled to open in 2025, Harris says that SJSU has been fostering digital humanities initiatives and learning communities for some time.
“Digital humanities is much more than a digital product,” says Harris. “It teaches collaboration, team building, infrastructure construction, and capacity building around some of the most important questions of our time.”
Supported in part by a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DHC will support innovative ways to combine the humanities with digital methods from fields such as software design, gaming and mapping — exercises that will encourage openness, experimentation, collaboration, connectedness and diversity.
“What SJSU brings to the field of digital humanities is our students,” says Harris. “We are committed to students being engaged in the project as the ones who are answering questions and producing knowledge. This differentiates SJSU from any other digital humanities center in the country.”
Supporting Undergraduate Research
The library assists in all aspects of the research lifecycle for students and faculty.
“When you are new somewhere, everything feels scary because so much is unknown,” says Elham Baharlouei, ’23 Graphic Design, who was selected as the 2022 Regina M. Legard Fellow for the Library Research Scholars Program (LRSP).
The LRSP offers a three-semester paid experience and pairs undergraduates with librarian mentors while preparing them to present at SJSU’s annual Student Research Competition. Their research is also published in SJSU ScholarWorks, a digital repository of the research, scholarship and creative works of San José State faculty, students and staff.
“It’s really important to learn where to find the resources you can trust. When you know how to conduct research, you can find answers to a lot of unknowns, and they are not as scary. I hope that by learning how to find answers to research questions, I can contribute to SJSU as much as I can.”
Find information about the Library Research Scholars Program.
Library scholar Elham Baharlouei, '23 Graphic Design, and her mentor Anne Marie Engelsen, '16 MLIS, senior assistant librarian. Photo: Robert C. Bain.
SJSU Special Collections & Archives offers free access to a variety of primary source materials. Video: Courtesy of King Library Special Collections & Archives.
Special Collections
The diversity of our collections — and the way we involve the public — matters.
SJSU Special Collections & Archives acquires, preserves and provides free access to rare and unique books, manuscript collections, institutional records and other primary sources to support the diverse teaching and research needs of students, faculty, staff and the larger SJSU community.
“I've had students ask how much it costs to access [our collections] or what they need to do to be allowed to see them,” says Carli V. Lowe, university archivist. “I want people to know that these collections are here for all of us and contain layers of undertold stories waiting to be surfaced.”
Virtual Reality
As libraries transform, emerging technology ensures we meet the demand of our users.
“Virtual reality opens up ways for students from different disciplines, such as art, music, engineering and design, to work together on virtual experiences that cross over all their areas of study. And we're just getting started,” says Jon Oakes, technology labs coordinator.
Oakes runs the King Library Experiential Virtual Reality (KLEVR) Lab, which offers an interactive, experiential environment to develop their own projects using tools like VR gaming computers, a Playstation 4 Slim, Oculus Rift and HTV Vive.
“It's not just about playing games and using software; we show them how to create their own VR experiences.”
Students interact with technology in the KLEVR Lab. Photo: Courtesy of the King Library marketing team.
Number of countries who have downloaded material from ScholarWorks since 2009
Number of articles downloaded from ScholarWorks since 2009
Number of articles downloaded from ScholarWorks since January 2022
Source: ScholarWorks.
The Open Movement
King Library is challenging information disparities and expensive paywalls.
Textbooks, educational resources and access to the latest research can often be prohibitively expensive for students and scholars alike. The open access movement aims to make scholarship freely available to everyone, says Scholarly Communications and Digital Scholarship Librarian Nick Szydlowski.
The King Library provides access to education resources for students, relieving them of the pressure to buy textbooks and supplementary resources. The library connects patrons to low-cost and no-cost open access resources and aggregates via the Affordable Learning Solutions program, coordinated by librarians Adriana Poo, '07 Healthcare Administration, '10 MLIS, and Christa Bailey, '12 MLIS, and provides training on how to best navigate the vast world of academic research. What’s more, the library helps SJSU authors make their work openly accessible through SJSU ScholarWorks, as well as through negotiation and collaboration with publishers.
“The open access movement aims to make scholarship freely available to everyone,” says Szydlowski. “There are many problems facing the global community, and open access to all research is needed to fuel global collaboration.
“On ScholarWorks alone, SJSU scholarship is downloaded 1.3 million times per year by readers in over 200 countries around the world.”
SJPL Partnership
Together, the King Library and the City of San José provide the best of public and academic resources for diverse and growing communities.
“The SJSU library is an outstanding academic library. Combined with the other 24 branches of the San José Public Library (SJPL), we are that much better and have the ability to leverage an amazing distribution network throughout the city. We can combine services and learn from each other.
“The innovation that the public has brought to their services — like SJPL Works*, for example — are services that aren’t traditionally found at academic libraries. The potential to serve the SJSU and San José populations better is tremendous,” says Michael Meth, library dean.
“We’re intentionally designing programs that will allow us to cross over between the public and the academic sides.”
*San Jose Public Works provides economic and workforce development resources for job seekers, small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library acts as a bridge between SJSU and the City of San José. Photo: Javier Duarte, '13 Radio, Television and Film.
The Rapid Prototyping Lab on the King Library's ground floor provides a maker space for SJSU students and faculty members, Photo: Laurel Eby, ’10 MLIS, King Library web services librarian.
Rapid Prototyping
The library creates space for interdisciplinary innovation.
The King Library established an interdisciplinary prototyping lab to encourage students to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges through innovation and ideation. By setting aside a space dedicated to bringing new ideas to life, the library is encouraging students to dream big.
“The Rapid Prototyping Lab provides the SJSU community a space within the library to innovate and explore using tools like 3D printers, laser cutters, heat presses and more to ideate, design and fabricate their ideas into reality,” says Christina Mune, ’11 MLIS, associate dean of innovation and resource management. “Nowhere else on campus is there an interdisciplinary space accessible for all students from all disciplines to potentially team up and create together.”
Information Literacy
How can faculty ensure that students understand how to best access library resources? The King Library’s information literacy program offers customizable training for faculty members by discipline. Subject-area librarians are available to collaborate with faculty and students to create research guides and offer targeted training on how to take advantage of library resources.
This service, says SJSU Engineering Lecturer Shawn Tran, offers two major benefits: It trains students how to maximize library resources specific to their majors or fields of study — and it instills a critical understanding of how to find, assess and rely on accurate sources.
“The information literacy program plays a pivotal role in educating students about services and resources that the SJSU library offers and supports faculty in providing needed workshops on important topics,” says Tran.
Librarians like Anne Marie Engelsen, ’16 MLIS, offer targeted information literacy sessions to SJSU faculty members and students. Left to right: Elham Baharlouei, ’23 Graphic Design; Ivana Rodriquez Arias, ’22 Psychology; Anna Paola Frias, ’24 Animation/Illustration; and Engelsen. Photo: Robert C. Bain.
Want to learn more?
Top video: King Library acts as the gateway to the university, connecting downtown San José to campus. Video: Courtesy of SJSU King Library Marketing team.
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