Staff Notes: Farewell to Bob Dugan

With a mix of sadness and great congratulations, the Staff of Sawyer Library says goodbye to Robert E. Dugan, our Library Director of twelve years, as he moves on to a new position as Dean of Libraries at the University of West Florida.

Bob has seen us through many changes--most especially the planning and building of the new Sawyer Library. The old Sawyer Library, largely subterranean, at 8 Ashburton Place, was a challenge for both staff and library users. Bob tried to keep us ahead of the curve, especially in areas of technology--Sawyer Library was one of the first libraries to loan laptops to users and provide them with an in-house wireless network--but the old Sawyer Library was cramped, dark, and an awkward maze of underground floors and mezzanines with no room for new books or new electronics.

Bob worked tirelessly throughout 2004, 2005 and 2006 to get the library planned and built, often rushing back and forth from his Ashburton Place office to the construction site, hard hat in hand--see picture above of "Bob the Builder," hardhat adorned--to attend to every detail. The new library opened, appropriately enough, on Bob's birthday, May 15th, in 2006. (And one of his proudest accomplishments is that the project was on time, under budget, and the Library did not miss a single hour of regularly scheduled service.)

In the new library, Bob continued to keep technology current. Again, our library was an early adopter of several new technologies, including the now popular check-out Kindles. And did you know that Bob was also our IT guy? Bob has spent countless hours "re-ghosting" and repairing Library PCs, laptops, and printers, even filling paper trays, and changing toner. And he also helped many faculty members and departments with software problems and repairs, doing quite a few office and house calls over the years. Clearly, this was not your average--"Don't bother me, I'm thinking big thoughts, wearing my tie!"--library director.

To say he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty was an understatement. Which is not to say that Bob didn't, in fact, have "big thoughts." Bob has authored and co-authored a great many articles and books on library best practices. His publications include Action Plan for Outcomes Assessment in Your Library, U.S. Government on the Web, and Revisiting Outcomes Assessment in Higher Education. And his latest book, Viewing Library Metrics from Different Perspectives: Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes just won a prestigious award at the latest ALA Convention.

Bob has even taught classes related to library management at our local "Library School," Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

Bob got into this library almost every morning, well before opening, to make sure that the library was ready to greet its public, and he stayed late many a night to set up for and supervise readings and events in the Poetry Center, a facility that he cared deeply about. Shooting video, lining up rows of chairs, Bob did everything he could to make every Poetry Center event a successful one.

His dedication and hard work are not to be questioned. Was he always the most warm and fuzzy boss to work for? I'd have to say no. (Sorry, Dude!) You really did not want to be the person to tell him another printer was broken or some act of petty vandalism had occurred. To this I can testify. But what this proved above all else is how deeply he cared about every printer, every light fixture, every database, and every resource this library offered to the Suffolk community.

That level of commitment and techno-savvy will be very difficult to find again.

So, thanks, Bob! All the best to you in Pensacola. Happy trails to you and to Peg (and your feline pals). And don't forget to crank up the Sugarland on the drive south.

[Bob's Farewell Party, hosted by Dean Greenberg, will be held in the Poetry Center on the Library's 3rd Floor at 3pm on Wednesday, July 7th. Please stop by and celebrate Bob's great service to the University and his future success! And if you can't make the fête--or even if you can--and you want to leave well wishes here, feel free to do so.]

Tales From The Front (Desk)--Ruminations on Why the World Still Needs Librarians

"Anyone can do good research....it's called Googling." "Who needs libraries?...Everything is free on the web!"

Librarians (to our dismay) hear statements like that every day. Don't get us wrong, we "Google" frequently ourselves, and we make constant use of materials that we find on the general internet. However, the best information that can be delivered electronically is, alas, not free at all. (Which is why we spend thousands of dollars each year providing the Suffolk community with superior quality journal databases and ebook collections.) Moreover, the issue isn't whether it is possible to find information using a search engine. For almost any search you could devise, you will indeed get hundreds or thousands or even millions of results. The question is, of the countless webpages you pull up, are any of them worth using, citing, or even reading?

One of our key missions is, therefore, to teach Suffolk students how to think critically about the thousands of "hits" they pull up on a Google search. What is the actual quality, veracity and currency of a source; who is the author and what is their level of expertise; what bias is being expressed in the content; and are the "facts" being provided documented and verifiable? (For more on this, take a look at Library Director Bob Dugan's Information Instruction Modules.)

The sheer number and variety of web resources present another danger, however. That is, many people now assume that everything worth knowing or reading or seeing is already available in electronic form--perhaps not in a free format, but at least in a fee-based database. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Many resources, especially those written before 1990, have never been "digitized." And projects to make more research materials available in web format have floundered recently. Even the mighty Microsoft is rethinking their ambitious web book project.

Librarians sometimes worry that they are perceived as redundant and unnecessary in a web-based and electronic culture. And perhaps that perception is there. Reality is another thing. Everyday, librarians help people explore and evaluate their options using both print and electronic resources. And (more often than you might think) librarians actually do exhaustive detective work to identify and locate needed materials for serious researchers. Here's a story from my personal experience:

Recently, a member of our science faculty requested help in locating an environmental impact study that had been done in the mid-70's in response to a proposed oil refinery in "Down East" Maine. This report included a species inventory he considered essential to his research. He knew the report existed. The authors verified this fact, but claimed not to have copies. The research laboratory for whom it had supposedly been compiled also claimed to have no copy. Our wonderful ILL assistant, Phally, tried to locate a copy in the inter/national combined catalog we have, called WorldCat, but could identify no library in North America (or beyond) that owned the report.

I Googled. I called. No luck. Then I started emailing any library, organization or agency that might have a copy of the report tucked away on a shelf or in a file cabinet. Among those contacted were the Region1 (New England) EPA Library, the National EPA-RTP Library, the Cobscook Bay Resource Center, the Maine Historical Society, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Bowdoin College (where a lead author had taught), the Maine Law and Legislative Library, Maine Audubon Society, the National Resources Council of Maine, the Nature Conservancy (in Maine, and National) and the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment. I must have emailed at least 30 individuals, organizations and libraries.

The Maine State Library said that they believed that they had a copy in a specific archival box, but our faculty member told me another researcher had not found it there.

I was starting to wonder if this was a lost cause. Still, even though I had already contacted the University of Maine (Orono and Machias) Libraries several times already, I remembered reading that Senator William S. Cohen had been involved in the decision-making about the refinery. Since his papers were held at the Special Collections Department of the Fogler Library at the University of Maine, I decided to send one more email out to the UMaine Archives.

Like Blanche DuBois, researchers often depend on "the kindness of strangers," and I was lucky enough to find a kindly archivist and librarian at the University of Maine (bless you, Brenda Howitson Steeves!) who took the time to sort through archival boxes in pursuit. And she found it! It didn't have the exact title I had been given, nor was it done for same agency as had been originally indicated. In short, if a librarian had not literally dug for this report and made the intellectual connection between what was asked for and what was in her hand, our happy faculty member would never have seen or read or made important scholarly use of this very rare (and never digitized) research report.

And that is why, dear reader, the world will always need the dedication and detective work that professional librarians bring to the scholarly pursuit of recorded knowledge. Google is great, but it will never replace that.