Remembering Susan Nutter

Former Vice Provost and Director of the NC State University Libraries Susan K. Nutter, who retired in 2017 after a 30-year career as one of NC State’s and the library world’s most dynamic and influential leaders, passed away on March 25.

Susan was predeceased in December by her beloved husband, best friend, and creative colleague, Joe Anderson Hewitt, former Vice Provost and University Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A memorial service was held on May 31 at the Hunt Library. To honor Susan, the Hill Library Color Wall and Conservatory were lit in purple—her favorite color—until after the memorial service. The Libraries has also created a memorial website (lib.ncsu.edu/remembering-susan) honoring Susan and her visionary career. Those who knew and worked with her are invited to celebrate her life by sharing thoughts, memories, and photographs of Susan on this site.

In memory of Susan, contributions may be made to the University Libraries’ Susan K. Nutter Innovative Leadership Fund.

A Legacy of Leadership

Susan placed the Libraries at the center of NC State’s overall success. She set forth an ambitious vision and worked tirelessly to achieve it, transforming every aspect of the library along the way. Her many significant achievements ranged from building world-class research collections and spearheading the creation of the online library, to attracting and developing a uniquely talented and capable staff, to overseeing the design and realization of many beautiful and inspiring spaces for learning, collaboration, and discovery.

Opened in 2013, the award-winning Hunt Library—Susan’s signature accomplishment—has become one of the region’s most iconic buildings. With a distinctive, bold design and infused with engaging technology, it enables and reflects NC State’s spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. Susan also ensured that the university’s first main library, the Hill Library, kept pace with Hunt through creative redesign and renovation of flexible, technology-rich learning spaces. These changes reinvigorated the very idea of a library’s centrality to its campus community.

While Susan’s legacy is her embrace of emerging technologies and innovative scholarship as embodied in the Hunt Library, it was her ability to connect with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and colleagues that made her such a special leader. She dedicated herself fully to helping all library users succeed, and she lived and breathed that dedication every day, reaching out to them to learn about their needs and challenges and building an organization with the talent and agility to develop creative and responsive solutions.

Susan’s many honors and awards include the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award (1999), the 2005 Library Journal “Librarian of the Year,” and the 2016 ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. Under her leadership, the Libraries was the first university library to win the ACRL “Excellence in Academic Libraries Award” in 2000. In 2016, she accepted the IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Service on the Libraries’ behalf from First Lady Michelle Obama in a White House ceremony.

Transforming the Libraries 

From the time she arrived in 1987, Susan’s vision for the Libraries anticipated what users would need in the future. Having glimpsed the power of networking and online resources through her early work at MIT, Susan immediately set out to build an online library at NC State. Today, the usage of the online library far exceeds that of the print collection. She also made the Libraries one of the first research libraries with a Learning Technologies Service to help faculty develop online courses, a Scholarly Communication Center to advise on intellectual property in the digital age, and a Digital Library Initiatives department developing innovative projects to revolutionize and enhance network-based services, access to collections, teaching, learning, and research.

In support of these innovations, Susan saw that she needed to build a staff that was agile enough to not only react to but anticipate library users’ ever-evolving needs. She recruited some of the profession’s top talent through the NCSU Libraries Fellows Program, established in 1999. Considered one of the premier opportunities for new talent in academic libraries today, the program identifies the most promising new graduates in the field of library and information science and provides them with a unique opportunity to launch their career with challenging assignments and support for their professional development. To date, 76 Fellows have completed the program, 52 of whom moved into permanent librarian positions here at the completion of their fellowship. Six former Fellows have been named Library Journal “Movers and Shakers.”

From the bustling Learning Commons at the Hill Library to the immersive visualization spaces at the Hunt Library, Susan gave NC State a world-class research platform with the power to transform teaching, learning, and research. She also built a highly motivated, expert staff that develops and delivers innovative services and is embedded in every aspect of the academic endeavor. Thanks to her leadership, the Libraries truly embodies NC State’s “Think and Do” culture.

The Library of the Future—and a Crowning Achievement

During her interview here in 1987, when asked about her plans for the future of the Libraries, Susan outlined a vision for building a library on Centennial Campus—a creative “nexus” for the emerging community of students, faculty, researchers, and corporate and government partners. In 2013, her dream was realized in a way that was more extraordinary than anyone could have imagined.

Now universally acknowledged as “the library of the future,” the Hunt Library is a signature building for the university. Its bold design echoes its bold purpose—to welcome all members of the NC State community to learn, experiment, collaborate, and create. This library has enlivened an international dialogue about the place and purpose of academic libraries in the twenty-first century.

The Hunt Library has been recognized nationally with some of the most prestigious awards for libraries and architecture. Notable recognition includes the 2014 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Educational Facility Design award, the 2013 AIA/ALA Library Buildings Award, and the 2014 Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries.

Always Looking Ahead

Although the Hunt Library is what will come to many people’s minds when they remember Susan’s legacy, her career at the Libraries ultimately adds up to an overarching idea. She was always asking the question, “What’s next?” Even while focused on the needs of current NC State students and faculty, Susan was driven to anticipate the needs of the students and faculty five or ten years in the future. She knew that as soon as an institution like an academic library holds still or rests on its laurels, it loses relevance. The student body changes substantially every year. Faculty come and go. Rather than just reacting to change and constantly chasing the needs of those the library served, she wanted to be out in front, with the resources already in place to meet those needs. She was proud of what she accomplished at the Libraries, but she didn’t much care to dwell on the past. She was always looking forward, toward building the best library and assembling the best team for the future.

Susan Nutter’s legacy remains alive today, both within and beyond the Libraries, manifest in a dynamic organization that is always asking, “What’s next?” and challenging others in librarianship, information technology, and higher education to do the same.