Research and Knowledge Creation

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library

– Shelby Foote

Many of us resolved to become librarians because we love research.  Further – the public service aspect of our position to help promote and facilitate research among our student and faculty user community is equally appealing.  Library faculty love to search:  hopefully our enthusiasm for engendering this in the classroom is infectious.

We’re proud and humbled by the time-honored, sacred mission of libraries as storehouses of knowledge and guardians of civilizations, initiated by our Egyptian forebears.  What is gratifying is that the primary directive of libraries has not changed in over a millennium:  only the formats and modes of collecting and access have transitioned.  Stone tablets, codices, and papyrus scrolls evolved into the book [considered by some as mankind’s greatest invention], electronic formats, digital resources – in conjunction with the artifacts and original preserved manuscripts of special collections.

Corresponding to the Vikings being entombed with their valued possessions – I indulge in being surrounded by the 439,604 monographs of the Leonard Lief Library.  Researchers can avail themselves of over 300 online databases, 1,471,626 electronic books, open educational resources, digital collections, DVDs and music CDs, microforms, original manuscripts, historic photographs, and ephemera.  While at times the sheer breadth, depth, and magnitude of this accumulated information can be overwhelming [So many books:  so little time!] – this does represent and document humankind’s preeminent intellectual, cultural, and scientific achievements.

Our valued mandate as librarians is to collect, organize, preserve, and make available these manifestations to our user communities.  Library instruction at both the Reference Desk and in the classroom helps guide students to search appropriately and efficiently, critically evaluate information sources, and apply findings to support their inquiry.  This iterative process is no different from that of faculty researchers and scholars synthesizing data, assessing research findings, theories, and supporting evidence into construction of new knowledge impactful in its manifold applications.

One of this Library’s primary attributes is the presence of our Liaison Librarians, corresponding to their relationship to the Schools of Business, Education, and Health Sciences, Human Services, and Nursing.  Their subject expertise in these disciplines is a distinct asset in student support and, particularly, faculty research since they speak the same language as their colleagues.  Faculty research is featured in Academic Works, Lehman’s instance of CUNY’s institutional repository [https://academicworks.cuny.edu/le/], where preprints are made openly accessible to benefit the global community by broadcasting Lehman College’s substantial faculty contribution to the scholarly enterprise.

In addition to stewarding and enabling discovery and transformation of information into knowledge – library faculty are practicing scholars in their own right.  One of the beauties and challenges of academic librarianship is that tenure track library faculty are encouraged to publish in a multiplicity of areas.  While Lehman librarians have distinguished themselves and our institution by producing content related to assessing Reference and information services, open educational resources, and collection development – we have also sustained inquiry into chatbots, climate change and cultural preservation, as well as opera children’s literature, among notable examples.

In this issue of Biblio-Tech – Lehman library faculty will consider both their professional practice in supporting research achievement – in addition to their own scholarly productivity.  We modestly – but passionately – infer that solutions to all the world’s leading problems can be potentially located within library collections.  Needless to say – we’re eager to share our findings with you.

Kenneth Schlesinger

Associate Dean and Chief Librarian