Perry Library

Ever evolving to meet the needs of today’s students, it remains the heart and soul of ODU

By Steve Daniel

“To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence.”
– John Quincy Adams (1767 - 1848)
Sixth president of the United States

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
– Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)
Argentinian poet and essayist

And then there’s this quote from a source unknown: “Knowledge is free at the library. Just bring your own container.”

A revered place to acquire knowledge, as Adams alluded, the public library has been a part of American culture since 1653, when the nation’s first such repository opened in Boston. On college and university campuses, the library is at the very heart and soul of higher education. It is here that students and faculty alike make new discoveries in their pursuit of knowledge. And it is here where students flock to do research for their papers, work collaboratively on assigned projects and study feverishly into the night for midterms and finals.

While technology has changed to a large degree how the modern university library serves its patrons, such as online access to services and resources and in-house computer workstations, many things have remained the same. Students continue to seek out its quiet study areas and browse among the rows upon rows of shelved books and periodicals.

ODU’s University Libraries, which consists of the Patricia W. and J. Douglas Perry Library, the F. Ludwig Diehn Composers Room and the Elise N. Hofheimer Art Library, recorded more than 687,000 visits combined in 2005-06 (654,075 at the main facility), according to university librarian Virginia S. O’Herron.

Together, the three facilities contain more than 3.2 million items, including 1.1 million bound volumes (books and journals) and more than 15,000 serial subscriptions. In addition to the books (on everything from Karl Marx to Groucho Marx) and periodicals (from Abstracts of English Studies to Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society), there are government publications, maps, microforms, audio/visual resources, music scores and sound recordings, and electronic resources.

New books are added at a rate of about 3 percent a year, and journals, mostly in electronic format, are being made available constantly. Perry Library recently acquired a new research database, “Early English Books Online,” which contains an astonishing 90,000-plus titles – digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed from 1473 - 1700 in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere.

It’s a far cry from the institution’s first library in the old Larchmont School building, which “was hastily improvised in Room 18,” as noted in the 1980 book “Old Dominion University: A Half Century of Service,” by James R. Sweeney, associate professor of history.

In the book, Sweeney recounts a memory of one of the Division’s first students, Rufus Tonelson ’33: “Tonelson recalls that because of the poor library facilities, the professors would, at the beginning of the semester, bring 25 or 30 books with them to be placed in the classroom.”

Over time, the Old Dominion University library outgrew that and other homes on campus. The current four-story facility, which underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion in the late 1990s, opened on May 17, 1976, with 610,000 volumes.

The chair of ODU’s chemistry and biochemistry department, Richard V. Gregory ’80, a student at the university in the late 1970s, recalls the new library being a haven for him.

“When I attended ODU it was primarily a commuting school. Living and working down at the oceanfront made it a long drive in those days. The library provided me with a place to study and do the required work in a comfortable, quiet atmosphere.

“This allowed me to prepare for class and put me in an academic frame of mind. During my time in the library I developed, with the help of the librarians, methodologies for conducting research from the archival literature on a scholarly level that served me well later in my graduate studies. Some of my best memories of my undergraduate years at ODU were from the time I spent at the library.”

The library was named in 1999 in recognition of a generous gift from Patricia Perry, a 1989 ODU graduate who was a member of the university Board of Visitors at the time, and her husband, Douglas Perry, then chairman of the board of Dollar Tree Stores. The longtime university supporters had earmarked their capital campaign contribution for library technology.

The number and scope of technological initiatives that have been introduced over the past decade are staggering. Today, the library boasts a lab with 100 computers, run by the Office of Computing and Communications Services; a reference room with 50 computer workstations; a sophisticated interlibrary loan computer system; wireless connectivity; a laptop loan program that patrons can use during their visit; and an ever-increasing number of electronic journal collections. (To date, the library has converted 35 percent of its print journals to electronic format, and thanks to its membership in the cooperative VIVA, the Virtual Library of Virginia, patrons have access to thousands of electronic journals and databases that are available to all public university and community college libraries.)

The library, indeed, has changed immeasurably from when the parents of today’s students went to college.

“Students today are more technologically fluent,” says O’Herron, who came to work at the University Libraries 13 years ago. “They use different avenues of communication such as blogs, cell phones, e-mail and chat rooms. They anticipate 24/7 access to information resources.

“Students today are more actively engaged in collaborative learning, from involvement in group projects to developing multimedia presentations. They also use the library as a space that fits their needs, whether for group study, a quiet area or a social space.”

Whether they are taking advantage of the print and electronic journals, databases, microforms or book collections, by all accounts, Perry Library is meeting these needs and more.

One patron, Mary Cosaboom, used the library regularly last year in her capacity as a master’s student in dental hygiene and as a graduate teaching assistant.

“As both a student, doing research for my thesis, and as a GTA, working on assignments from faculty, the library has been a constant source of information for me,” she said.

A nontraditional student from Arizona, Cosaboom, 63, said she took advantage of everything from a reserved study carrel, to the computer lab to work with other students on assignments, to the many tables located throughout the facility when she just needed a large surface area to work on GTA projects.

“I have also taken my laptop there to work deep into the night on projects which required extensive synthesis and concentration.”

From a faculty perspective, Maura Hametz, associate professor of history, notes, “The library – its staff, print and electronic collections, resources and services – is critical to my research and teaching here at ODU.

“The library is at the heart of any academic institution. For faculty, it provides the central forum for research exploration and dissemination of knowledge across the disciplines. For students, it provides resources to enhance the classroom experience and offers access to worlds of knowledge to spark intellectual development and foster critical thinking skills necessary to success at the university and life after ODU.”

Cynthia Jones, eminent scholar of oceanography and director of ODU’s Center for Quantitative Fisheries Ecology, is another huge “fan” of the library, which she treasures as “a quiet and peaceful place to think and contemplate.” She has even browsed its electronic subscriptions from a hotel room in Juneau, Alaska, while working on a paper.

“A thorough knowledge of the literature is the foundation of doing good science. Simply put, I must know what has been done already or I risk duplicating research that doesn’t need duplication,” Jones said.

“The library is my best resource for keeping my intellectual skills honed. It provides trained reference librarians who are better than I at finding obscure but important work.”

She recalls the time she needed to find a rare book published in 1889, which science and technology reference librarian Renee Davis soon located and had delivered. (“It was a wonderful book rich in hand-colored etchings. The prints were so beautiful they almost came alive,” Jones remembers.)

Known for its dedicated staff, the University Libraries employs 21 librarians and 46 staff members.

“I am privileged to work with a fine staff who have a commitment to serving our students, faculty, university staff and community,” O’Herron said. “Resources, services and staff – those are the essential components of a library.”

Instructional services librarian Cynthia Swaine, who has been with the library since 1975, says she enjoys the work because of the people, the change and the challenge. “There is a team spirit here, there really is,” she said.

Swaine particularly relishes the challenge of handling students’ queries. Seven years ago, she designed the Web-based “Idea Generator” to help students who are struggling with ideas for term papers, speeches and classroom presentations. Here, from a list of broad categories, students can click on one to browse through a variety of key words and phrases, then explore the ideas and devise a more specific topic.

The library’s Web site also offers “Ask-a-Librarian,” a service designed to answer brief, factual questions and to provide initial research consultation – everything from historical facts to quotation sources to places to search for paper topics.

Of course, there are always the occasional questions that come out of left field. Two of Swaine’s favorites from years past: What is the magnetic resonance of the atmosphere above Portsmouth? and, Is a tumblesault the same thing as a somersault?

One of the more interesting stops on the Perry Library tour is the Special Collections room, tucked away at the front of the building on the third floor. Housed here is the University Archives, as well as books and printed material relating to Virginia and Tidewater history. The manuscripts area contains diaries, letters, legal and campaign files, photographs and maps that document such subjects as the Civil War, Virginia politics, military history, African American history, Norfolk urban redevelopment and women’s history.

It is among the area’s most extensive resources for information related to Virginia’s “Massive Resistance” movement in the late 1950s, when public schools were closed to prevent desegregation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. The majority of this collection documents the events of the school closings in Norfolk, including materials related to the efforts of several prominent citizens to reopen the city’s schools. At the other end of the third floor, Karen Vaughan in Digital Services has been busy over the past year digitizing volumes of printed information about the movement and the “Norfolk 17,” the first students to integrate Norfolk’s public schools.

In spring 2004, the University Libraries obtained the Virginia Symphony Orchestra archives. Materials range from the 1921 program from the first concert of the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Norfolk to audio-visual performance tapes to administrative and financial records. The Web address for these holdings is www.lib.odu.edu/special/ manuscripts/vasymphony.htm.

Later in 2004, University Libraries acquired the collected papers of Virginia 2nd District Congressman Edward L. Schrock, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from January 2001 to January 2005.

Special Collections also houses some rare “treasures.” One is a thick, leather-bound book written in 1550 by Martin Luther, German leader of the Protestant Reformation. It contains criticism and interpretations of the Bible, as well as church sermons. Another treasure is a collection of pottery from Cyprus that dates as far back as 2000 B.C.

The University Libraries’ two branches, the Diehn Composers Room and the Hofheimer Art Library, are both located in the Diehn Fine and Performing Arts Center.

The Hofheimer Art Library contains more than 10,000 volumes on architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting, print media, photography and arts and crafts.

The Diehn Composers Room features a listening library, which houses music special collections, scores, music videos and sound recordings. The facility makes a full complement of audio equipment available for users and has a small reference collection containing resources of special interest for sound recordings research. The silence of the Diehn Composers Room’s quiet reading room is occasionally broken by the sound of music, when scholars sit at the Steinway grand piano to play selections from the listening library’s special collections.

O’Herron, who has now served four years as university librarian (the first two years in an acting capacity), is rightfully proud of the University Libraries, and she and her staff are constantly implementing new services to meet the needs of their users. These initiatives include the recent pilot program for laptop lending, digital exhibits that promote such university events as the 75th anniversary celebration, Black History Month and Women’s History Month, and information resources that support new programs.

Perry Library also hosts special reading groups throughout the year. During the fall 2005 semester, the library and the Institute for Jewish Studies and Interfaith Under-standing cosponsored a free, five-part series that explored Jewish literature and culture through readings and discussions of contemporary and classic books.

The library also is supported by a vibrant Friends of the Library organization. Among its 2005-06 activities, FoL sponsored a Banned Books Week panel discussion, its 12th Annual Author Dinner and the 2006 annual meeting of the North American Jules Verne Society.