Message from the Interim Dean

This is a special extravaganza issue combining stories from November and December. Our lead story, written for Native American Heritage Month, discusses the important work of archivists to update collection finding aids to provide appropriate context as our understanding of history evolves. This is especially important for our collections related to Indian boarding schools, which are part of the national conversation with the announcement of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021 and its investigation, as well as President Joe Biden’s formal apology last October for the government’s 150-year policy of forcibly assimilating Indian children.

We introduce a new feature for Browse, a rotating guest column by WSU faculty. Our first columnist, Dr. Sophia Tegart, assistant professor of flute, is an exceptional performer, winner of a 2023 President’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and a recent recipient of a faculty fellowship from the David G. Pollart Center for Arts and Humanities at WSU. Her extensive use of the libraries’ interlibrary loan services to borrow scores by women composers is an excellent example of how we support a wide array of specialized research.

A feature on our amazing Access Services team highlights our increasing reliance on borrowing and lending collections with other libraries to support research at WSU. As the prices charged by academic publishers rise every year while our collections budgets remain flat, we will continue to reduce our subscriptions to scholarly journals. Academic libraries across the country are making similarly difficult choices regarding their collections. I am grateful that we have a nimble team led by Brian McManus that focuses on excellent customer service and provides fast, electronic scholarly articles and book chapters requested by WSU student, faculty, and staff researchers. Also, thanks to our many generous supporters, we are drawing on gift funds to purchase scholarly books, which will help us stretch our collections funding.

In 2025, we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of Holland Library with events and stories. If you have memories as a student or employee working in Holland Library, please contact me or Shane Johnson, the libraries’ development director. Last week, we utilized the old Holland atrium for a lecture by Dr. Emily Kopley, who in her research has drawn extensively on one of our great, special collections, more than 9,900 books owned by the British authors Virginia and Leonard Woolf. Please reach out if you are interested in a tour of the Woolf Library, or you can simply visit Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Next fall, we will have 30 new laptops available for checkout and a new Synth Lab with sampling and recording equipment in the Dimensions Lab. See the story in this issue on the inspiring work of our employees and Digital Audio Collective student club to secure funding for these projects through the WSU Student Technology Fee Committee. Shane Johnson also contributed a profile on GIS Librarian Josh Conver, who hosts his own KZZU student radio show featuring audio collections held in the libraries.

I want to thank everyone who stopped by the WSU Press annual Holiday Book Fair on Dec. 5. We had a busy day and extended the sale beyond closing time due to demand. Please consider supporting the press this holiday season by giving books as presents. Wishing you all a joyous holiday season and a happy new year.

Trevor