University Librarian Karin Trainer, who has been in the position for 21 years, will be stepping down from her position on July 1, 2016.
“It seemed as if it were a good time to turn the reins over to a new person,” Trainer said. "I think it will be good for the library to have a new generation of university librarian in place."
She added that it was a difficult decision for her, and she had to think about it for a long time.
Trainer, who was appointed in 1996, said she was the first woman to hold the position of university librarian at the University. When she first became a research librarian in the 1970s, there had been fewer than five women who had ever led a major American research library, she said.
“It’s been very encouraging for me to see in the course of my library career how the opportunities for women in academic librarianship have improved,” she said.
She also noted that throughout her time as university librarian, the library has grown both in terms of digital content as well as print collections.
“There is still a lot of scholarly material that is not available in any kind of digital format, and we’re very committed to continue to get material in print,” she said. "The growth of our print collections is a great satisfaction to me as is the growth of our special collections, by which I mean our collections of rare books and manuscript."
History professor Stephen Kotkin, who is leading the search committee for the new librarian, said a committee of eight members is in the outreach phase of finding a new librarian. He said that if things go well the committee will have nominations for the position of university librarian sometime in February 2016, and that the goal is to have a new librarian by July 1.
The committee members are from diverse sectors of the University and were appointed by University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, Kotkin noted. He explained that the committee’s responsibility is to bring forth finalists, interview them and make recommendations to the president and the provost, who will make the final decision.
He also noted that the committee is consulting with undergraduate and graduate students and various groups of faculty, in addition to holding open forums about the future of the library.
“We want to engage the undergraduates here. We want the undergraduates to tell us how the library is working for them and how it could do better,” he explained.
On Dec. 4, an undergraduate focus group discussed students’ ideas on the libraries and improvements they would like to see. The group discussed issues including the demand for 24-hour study spaces and collaborative group work spaces.
Deana Davoudiasl ’16, who attended the focus group, said that there seems to be a lack of spaces to do small group work within the libraries when students want to get a group together to work on problem sets. She noted that another issue is students not being able to fully utilize library resources, possibly because they do not know of all the resources available to them.
“I would suggest highlighting on either a digital or physical fun-fact sheet all the amazing resources that Princeton has,” she said.
In addition to responding to students’ suggestions for improvement, the new university librarian’s agenda may also include finding librarians to take over the jobs of future retiring staff, Trainer said. She noted that the library has started to see a spike in the number of retirements and that she predicts that there will continue to be a number of retirements in the several years ahead.
Reflecting on her own experience, Trainer noted that working as university librarian is so intellectually interesting and challenging because one must keep up with what goes on in the modern university.
“It’s a really invigorating and exciting kind of work,” she said. “You know that the work you are doing matters, that it matters to a cadre of talented students and faculty members who go out and do important things in the world.”
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