Pat Steele, dean of libraries

New Dean of Libraries Patricia Steele has decided to move from the sprawling countryside and peaceful midwestern lifestyle in Bloomington, Ind., to a world of constant bumper-to-bumper traffic and high-rise apartments in the Washington metro area.

And she couldn’t be more excited.

Steele took over as the new dean of libraries Tuesday, after working for more than 30 years in Indiana University’s library system. Steele said this university’s strategic plan and its vision for the libraries, in addition to the diversity and high quality of the students, is eventually what drew her away from her Bloomington home.

And she’s bringing changes for the university libraries with her.

Steele said she plans on creating more student-friendly, comfortable study spaces in the library and working more closely with faculty on their research projects.

Most importantly, Steele is looking to update the library’s technological resources.

“I really want to help the library take the next step in defining what libraries are in a digital age,” Steele said.

During her time in Bloomington, she worked to involve the university with the Google Books Library Project, an initiative to digitize the libraries, putting them in an easy-access online catalog. The initiative has made it easy to search books from libraries around the country. With Steele’s help, Indiana University became the first within the Committee on Institutional Cooperation — a group of mainly Big Ten schools looking to digitize their collections — to send books to Google to be logged in the search site.

Steele said she would like to make this university part of the Google project, too, adding a big part of that would be supplying the special collections housed on-campus as a unique contribution to the project. 

“I am particularly excited about Steele because she is technologically savvy,” Provost Nariman Farvardin said. “University libraries are being influenced exponentially by electronic media and Patricia Steele is the person to accelerate this transition.”

Steele said she hopes the digital changes and study space remodeling she has planned will help make the library a center of life on campus.

Students like senior economics major Trea Zemaitis said he thought improvements to the technology in the library would be helpful.

“Most students look for things online way before they crack a book,” Zemaitis said. “I’m sure I’ve run into people that don’t even know how to find books in [the library].”

Others, like senior family science major Natalie White, were less sure.

“When I think about the library, I think books,” White said. “I don’t really think it needs to be electronic.”

As Steele begins her reign as dean this week, she faces a new set of challenges: The library is experiencing budget cuts right along with the rest of the university. Interim Dean Desider Vikor took over the position in July 2008 and described the cash shortage and a hiring freeze challenges he faced during his time as dean.

“We managed resources as best as we could,” Vikor said.

But Steele is still determined to make use of the scant resources to achieve her goals despite a low budget during the current economic downturn.

“If you have expectations beyond your fiscal support, that’s possible that raises unhappy issues,” Steele said. “The university has been supportive. These are different times for the university and libraries. Core mission work, that’s what we want to do. Figuring out the core mission work, that is the trick.”

tousignant@umdbk.com