Annual Report, 2023-24

North Carolina State University Libraries July 1, 2023–June 30, 2024 Annual Report to the Provost

View this report as a PDF

Section I: Unit Activities that Align with Wolfpack 2030 Strategic Plan Goals

Goal 1: Empower students for a lifetime of success and impact.

• Expanded the Libraries Student Scholarship Program from five to 10 scholarships, creating 22 awards worth a total of $67,760.
• Closed a $780,000 graduate fellowship endowment and a $729,000 student scholarship endowment, the largest fellowship and scholarship endowments in Libraries history. FY24 Scholarship gifts have totaled $2,323,500, a 555% increase from last year’s total.
• Helped students develop critical data science skills through open workshops and course-integrated instruction, covering topics such as introduction to Python and R, designing data visualizations, and using GIS tools.
• Launched the Emerging Engineers Program, focused on building community and a sense of belonging among engineering undergraduates and fostering engagement with local alumni from the College of Engineering.
• Launched the NC State Gaming and Esports Lab in the Hunt Library in January 2024. In its first semester, the lab had over 7,000 uses, representing students from every college.

Goal 2: Ensure preeminence in research, scholarship, innovation and collaboration.

• Added two new Open Access (OA) publisher agreements in FY24, for a total of 12 OA agreements. The Libraries’ OA agreements have saved NC State authors over $1.8M in Article Processing Charges since 2022.
• In anticipation of increased demand for Research Data Management (RDM) and sharing, worked to enhance and expand the Libraries' data services portfolio, maturing our RDM support and integrating it with campus grant planning and administration.
• In collaboration with the Data Science Academy (DSA), developed a merged data science consulting model. Data Science Consultants and Libraries staff conducted nearly 2,000 data science consultations for students, faculty, and staff.

Goal 3: Expand and advance our engagement with and service to North Carolina and beyond, defining the standard for a 21st-century land-grant university.

• Initiated a transformative resource-sharing program, offering free lending of NC State items to all community colleges in North Carolina and the Cooperating Raleigh Colleges, exemplifying our commitment to serving diverse educational institutions across the state and fostering statewide educational advancement.
• Expanded the Open Pedagogy Incubator to develop and sustain an interdisciplinary community of practice on open education. This program served as a model for the UNC System, which invited us to develop and lead a Systemwide version of the Incubator.
• Completed Phase One of the Institute of Museum and Library Services-funded “Extending NC Cooperative Extension Digital History,” a project to digitize primary source materials on agricultural extension and its impact on the state’s citizens and agricultural economy. The Libraries has been awarded a grant of $149,999 to expand this collection.

Goal 4: Champion a culture of equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging and well-being in all we do.

• At the Hunt Library, transformed the former Game Lab into The Landing, a student-centered wellness space on Centennial Campus. Partnered with counselors from the College of Engineering to provide weekly group wellness activities in Spring 2024.
• Led the Making Space series, which aims to confront bias and systemic barriers to inclusion in the STEM fields. A number of invited speakers led hands-on workshops and shared their experiences with students and attendees.
• Through the Femme Game Night series, the organizers of which won an Equity for Women Award this year, we expanded our efforts to create an inclusive atmosphere for student gaming in library spaces.
• Conducted a third iteration of Gallup’s Q12 Employee Engagement Survey, with results showing sustained improvement in all 12 surveyed areas since it was first administered in 2020. There was a noticeable increase in employee engagement, advancing from 47% to 60% “actively engaged” employees.

Goal 5: Improve university effectiveness through transformative technologies, cutting-edge processes and actionable data.

• The Citation Index, a collection of publications by NC State authors, introduced a more intuitive search interface, added functionality powered by machine learning, and enabled exploration of local collaboration networks within NC State's research ecosystem.
• Improved discoverability of library resources, software, workshops, and devices through a website redesign.
• Updated technology in multiple high-impact spaces, including the Hill Library’s iPearl Innovation Studio, and the Duke Energy Hall and Art Wall at the Hunt Library.

Goal 6: Lead in developing innovative partnerships, entrepreneurial thinking and applied problem-solving.

• In its first semester, NC State Esports partnered with the College of Engineering, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the Poole College of Management to host events with the US Air Force and industry leaders Epic Games and Nvidia on topics including hardware research and development, entrepreneurship, and the role of gaming in teaching and training.
• Partnered with UNC System libraries on the evaluation and licensing of the Alma library services platform, which will help provide users statewide with materials and services more efficiently and provide a platform for technical innovation.
• Participated in the Dryad big data working group, partnering with a leader in the field of research data sharing and access to help develop strategies to enable researchers share their data at scale.

Goal 7: Elevate the national and global reputation and visibility of NC State.

• Both the Hunt and Hill Libraries have continued to attract high-profile visitors as well as prospective faculty members, graduate students, and prospective undergraduates and their families, who receive customized tours from library staff.
• Hosted nationally-known authors including Henry Winkler, Holly Black, and Alex Michaelides, who have brought more than 1,700 attendees to NC State’s campus for author events.
• Planned and coordinated more than 307 programs and events that were free and open to the university community and the public, including film screenings, faculty lectures, and student research presentations, with a total of 16,254 attendees.
• The Special Collections Research Center made several important acquisitions this year, including a letter from Albert Einstein and the York Family Collection of Cameron Village drawings.
• The Libraries was accepted as a screening partner in the 2023-24 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, funded by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. Eight Southern filmmakers visited the Libraries and participated in discussions with nearly 400 attendees including students and members of the general public.

Section II: Topics Relevant to the Unit

Program updates or changes

Include scope of activities, volume of activities, special achievements, or significant and special program reviews, studies or plans

• Completed a study to conceptualize increased experiential learning spaces in the Hunt Library that would support making, active learning, collaboration, and data skills.
• Allocated office space in the Hill Library for staff of the Global One Health Academy and Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs.
• Allocated and modified a number of workspaces and offices in the Hill Library for the College of Education and Department of Psychology following the closure of Poe Hall in November 2023. Housed the Media and Education Technology Resource Center (METRC) collection and staff at Hill and collaborated with a vendor to create a “shelf-ready” materials program for that center.

Initiatives

Major initiatives and/or changes to programs or activities

• Esports: The Libraries led the launch of the NC State Esports program, hiring Cody Eslen as Esports Program Director in November 2023 and opening the NC State Gaming & Esports Lab (GEL) in January 2024.
• Data science: Deepened our collaboration with the DSA, completing its office suite in the Hill Library. Fully merged the Libraries/DSA data science consulting service, creating a seamless process for NC State affiliates seeking help with data-intensive projects. Awarded $250K from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to write a book and support conference presentations on models in data science consulting, establishing NC State’s reputation for expertise in that field.

Staff

Major new appointments, kudos, professional activities and recognition

• Cody Elsen appointed as Esports Program Director
• The Libraries Development team was recognized with three 2023 University Development Awards: 1) Gifts & Commitments, Exceeded Stretch Goal; 2) Endowment Giving, Highest Percent of Total; 3) Qualification Outcomes, Highest Percentage Improvement
• Tarida Anantachai, 2024 Library Journal Mover & Shaker
• Femme Game Night Team: Equity for Women Award, NC State University Council on the Status of Women AND Chancellor’s Creating Community Award: The Libraries
• NC State Gaming and Esports Lab Team: IT Community Extraordinary Team Impact Award
• Adebola Fabiku, Reference and User Services Association Division Councilor for the American Library Association Council.

Challenges

Recommendations and concerns for the future

• Ongoing resources for personnel and operational costs are critical to support NC State Esports as an engine for next-generation learning, research, student engagement, and collegiate esports in the state, and as a significant driver of economic growth in North Carolina. A FY22 allocation from the NC General Assembly was designated to cover capital costs only. Approval of the proposed operating budget request is essential to the program’s success.
• Continued demand for and assignment of space in Libraries buildings for staff based in other units has resulted in a net loss of student seating. The Libraries’ ability to accommodate other partners has reached its limit, without significant additions to or modifications of the existing facilities.
• Sustaining a strong research collection while losing approximately $300,000 next year in buying power due to inflation is a significant challenge, as we continue to fall behind our peer institutions on these expenditures that support the university’s competitiveness.

Opportunities

Advancement for growth in the future

• The recent D. H. Hill Jr. Library Comprehensive Study “set in place a road map for physical space strategies to support the continued delivery of exemplary library services.” The ideas outlined in the study show a way forward for how the physical library environment can adapt to deliver services and experiences necessitated by the changing role of libraries, the emergence and popularity of new tools and technology, and increased enrollment at NC State.

Services

Volume of Activities

(23/24, 22/23, 18/19, 13/14)

Collection Use, Expenditures, and ARL Rankings

Library Spaces

Collection Statistics

 a) User visits include all Libraries locations and the College of Education Media and Education Technology Resource Center (METRC). METRC was relocated from Poe Hall to the Hill Library in November 2023 and has reduced its seating capacity by ~100 seats.

b) Instruction and outreach includes 587 instruction sessions in faculty classrooms; 131 instruction sessions in colleges, departments, and centers; 78 course collaborations; 192 Libraries workshops; 225 Libraries outreach programs; 48 orientation tours; and 108 METRC sessions.

c) Includes print circulation, reserve materials (both print and electronic), and textbooks.

d) Decrease in e-book usage due to major publishers transitioning from accounting for usage at the book section level to reporting at the book title level.

e) Includes library-related expenditures made by colleges and units outside of OUC 25. Excludes benefits.

f) Currently ARL’s membership includes 118 North American academic libraries.

g) Public seating counts do not include auditoriums, faculty and graduate student study rooms and commons, teaching labs, or high-tech spaces. Card-swipe spaces include faculty and graduate student study rooms and commons, and teaching labs.

h) Decrease due to transition to a new card-swipe mechanism, where patrons swipe in to use the space And interested parties stopping by to look are no longer counted

i) Annual fluctuations in reservations due to experimentation with more efficient mechanisms to oversee reservations of media spaces within the Digital Media Lab.

j) The NC State Gaming & Esports Lab opened on January 16, 2024.

k) High-tech spaces include the Hill Library Cyma Rubin Visualization Gallery and the Hunt Library Teaching & Visualization Lab. Spaces are used for courses, demonstrations, workshops, seminars, research (including thesis presentations), and events.

l) The iPearl Innovation Studio opened on February 8, 2021. To date, a total of 112 collections showcasing 308 individual works have been displayed, representing a total of 359 unique collaborations with students, staff, and faculty in 98 academic departments, four non-academic units, and 10 collaborators from external universities/schools.

m) Represents 82 events involving 31 collaborations with: 12 campus units/centers, four colleges, three academic programs, three academic units, one department, one club, and seven external organizations.

n) The historic volume count has been changed to reflect the titles available in the Libraries’ collection.

o) Electronic subscriptions = 115,384; Print subscriptions = 421.

p) Includes e-books, e-journals, and e-databases; includes NC LIVE resources.

q) Includes the Special Collections Research Center’s rare and unique materials, scholarly publications in the Institutional Repository, the Design Library Image Collection, and the Inside Wood Collection.