skip to page content | skip to main navigation
summary
 SOCRATES  E-JOURNALS  SITE SEARCH  ASK US SULAIR HOME  SU HOME
 

Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources
2003-05 Biennial Report


 

Facts

 



arrow leftarrow right

 

Contents

Introduction

 

Foreword

 

 

In this section of our report we present an array of information as well as facts and figures that underlie, or result from, the multiplicity of activities and endeavors always evolving in service of the academic mission. We also acknowledge staff arrivals and departures over the past two years, and pay tribute to those friends and donors who have left us. A large portion-of this section is dedicated to a selection of the remarkable, rare and enthralling materials that we have acquired over the past two years, followed by our recognition of those who have supported our endeavors through their generosity.

In service of Stanford University's academic mission, The Stanford University Libraries, managed as a consolidated entity comprising fourteen of the eighteen libraries on campus, generate their own complex of facts and statistics. They occupy 503,300 square feet in either dedicated or shared buildings across campus, as well as 34,533 square feet in dedicated off-campus storage space-SAL3. Along with HighWire Press and the Stanford University Press, the Stanford Libraries have an average combined budget of about eighty million dollars a year; and 530 fulltime staff, many of whom are experts in one or more of a wide variety of specialties traditional to a library as well as increasingly familiar in support of its digital Doppelgänger. They employ in addition around four hundred students, temporary staff and casual workers. Overall the libraries occupy an unusual physical environment, with space for collections and services, studying, collaboration, specialized information technology, consultation services, and a variety of labs as well as quiet places to read, to think, to create. There are roughly eight million books and dozens of millions of other objects (typed, drawn, handwritten, photographic, or recorded); and tens of millions of dollars-worth of licensed data amounting to over forty terabytes each year and growing. Just staying current with the basic information published today in the many fields taught and studied at Stanford requires adding some 150,000 books a year, from over 130 countries and thousands of publishers. There are nearly 50,000 current serials, 281,000 cartographic holdings and 5.8 million microform holdings, as well as access to thousands of digital resources. The annual acquisitions expenditure is more than eighteen million dollars. And we circulate about 1.5 million items each year from the physical collections, even in this time of massive use of the digital information resources we provide on the Stanford University network. Many faculty (and the library specialists who support them) argue this is not nearly enough, that the library is not buying enough of what they specifically need. And, as new programs are formed, new fields developed and surveyed, the requirement is acute for information resources for these additions to the Stanford range of engagement.

Special Collections and University Archives include about 259,000 rare or otherwise "special" books, nearly fifty-nine million manuscript pages, including the archives of R. Buckminster Fuller; manuscripts and correspondence of John Steinbeck; the historical archives of Apple Computer; the papers of Russian writers Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesenskii; the papers of Herbert Aptheker, Cecile Pineda, Nathaniel Tarn and William Abrahams; and the records of the Whole Earth Catalog and of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company from 1895 through 1991. Recently acquired were the Samson Copenhagen Judaica Collection, which includes two thousand volumes of rare Hebraica; the Oscar I. Norwich collection of maps of Africa and its islands; the archive of Herbert Matter; the photographic archive of Douglas Menuez; a collection of twelve hundred prints by Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada; and the papers of American writer Joyce Carol Thomas.

The libraries also provide online tools, tricks, shortcuts, and services, that not only help people identify what they wish to read or download, but also help them to use, edit, and transform sources into new knowledge, new synthesis-the substance of scholarship. All of these services, together with many that are "back of house," are conducted in service of the scholars, researchers and students who use the libraries and its services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week-whether they are occupying one of the eighteen reading rooms, five group study rooms, one hundred ninety-four faculty studies or dissertation rooms, sixty-four carrels (including twelve assignable desk carrels on the third floor of the Bing Wing), or accessing information via one of the eight hundred computers available to Stanford students and faculty,including those in Residential Computing.


Staff

Our reports in previous years have conveyed the strong performance of individuals, groups, and the entire staff of SULAIR in making this organization effective in achieving its main mission of supporting teaching, learning, and research at Stanford. The years 1993 through 2003 were characterized by re-engineering our processes and services to take best advantage of the new opportunities offered by a stable and capacious global Internet as well as easily accessible and affordable computer applications. In that period we also rebuilt our staff and hired new staff members who had been raised and trained in the Internet environment.

With the experience gained from a diverse set of groundbreaking programmatic initiatives, we in SULAIR, HighWire Press, and the University Press are now embarking on a period of fundamental transformation of the services we provide. The resulting inter-and intra-disciplinary developments at Stanford, as well as attainments in teaching, learning, and research, will affect not only the extended Stanford community, but also users around the globe.

At this point I wish to acknowledge those staff members who have joined us over the past two years, as well as those who have left us, either through retirement or by moving on to other organizations.


To SULAIR we welcomed Richard N. Anderson, Mary Christina Bourg, Kenneth Pak-Kun Chan, Hsiao-Yun Chu, Catherine Nicole Coleman, Michael A. Forte, David G. Giovacchini, Rachel M. Gollub, Michael John Gorman, Clayton T. Hamilton, Kathy A. Hudson, Keith Johnson, Katherine B. Kott, Lydia L. Li, Sherwin S. Lu, Jennifer K. Ly, Julie M. Mai, Jerry L. McBride, Cheryl E. McGrath, Robert Muller, Stephen D. Paietta-Lim, Twyla Parks, Peter J. Rolla, David S. H. Rosenthal, Dongfang Shao, Andrew Woodruff Shutes, Edwin L. Smiley, Sarah Beth Sussman, and Qingru Zhang.


Martha P. Cooley, Peter Hutchinson, and Harold Moorehead joined the SU Press.

HighWire Press was joined by Gregory M. Baliton, Jeremy Andrew Bergfeld, Margaret S. Bierman, Jeremy M. Brautman, Forrest D. Bryant, Pamela Gage, Janet L. Gomez, Carol Hagler, Zena Amber Harvill, Sharon Elaine McCorkle, Sean W. Messenger, Seth J. Morabito, Julie Morrison, Sean Munday, Susanne Evelyn North, Jeff Okamoto, Teresa A. Pacht, Robert W. Phillips, Russell G. Sage, Herb Schmulewicz, Helen Szigeti, Priya Venkitakrishnan, and Josie Venturillo.

Over the past two years, the following staff have moved on to other opportunities or have retired from the Libraries: Charlotte R. M. Derksen, Earth Sciences Library; Raymond H. Deutsch, HighWire Press; Richard Koprowski, Archive of Recorded Sound; Janet M. McCarthy, Library Technology; Donna Hjertberg, Publications; Dianne Chilmonczyk, Technical Services; and Maria Rode, Cataloging Services.

From SU Press: Eleanor P. Mennick, Design & Manufacturing; James W. Torrence, Sales & Marketing; and Helen -Tartar, Acquisitions.

Events

One very special event in 2003 deserves particular mention. After years of hopes and much planning, SULAIR awarded the first-ever William Saroyan International Prize for Writing at a memorable ceremony in July 2003. The inaugural winner was Jonathan Safran Foer for his first novel, Everything is Illuminated. The winner was selected from over 150 applicant works published in 2002: each was carefully reviewed and winnowed by ASUL members and volunteer SULAIR staff before the fifteen short-listed works were presented to a panel of judges comprising Professor Eavan Boland, Professor Geoffrey Nunberg, film producer Hank Saroyan, and publishing executive Alberto Vitale. The Saroyan Prize award is a biennial competition, and the second award duly took place in July 2005, with two winners, one for -fiction George Hagen's The Laments-and one for non-fiction-The King of California, co-written by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman. The panel of judges in 2005, while losing Mr. Vitale, was bolstered by the addition of literary entrepreneur Steve Leveen (of Levenger Catalog fame), psychologist Ginger Rhodes, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes. Many able hands, and the co-sponsorship of the Saroyan Foundation, make the Saroyan Prize competition one of the highlights of the SULAIR calendar (albeit every other year).


Associates of the Stanford University Libraries

Our friends group, The Associates of the Stanford University Libraries, or ASUL, conducted a number of meetings and events throughout the two years covered by this report, in addition to publishing their semi-annual journal Imprint and newsletter Ex Libris.

Sponsored events included lectures such as "In Folio: Thirty-two Volumes from Special Collections" by Stanford rare books librarian John Mustain; "Singing Music from Early Manuscripts" by Professor William Mahrt; "Behind the Scenes of the Hoover Archive" by Hoover Library and Archives exhibit coordinator Cissie Dore Hill; and "The Martin Luther King Papers" by Professor Clayborne Carson.

ASUL offered members the opportunity to participate in workshops such as: Paper Marbling conducted by Jill Knuth and Joy Scott, as well as to attend the annual holiday party and other sponsored events at the end of each academic year. Arranged trips included the California Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco, and selected "Bay Area Treasures" such as the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Library in San Jose and the Center for the Book in San Francisco.


Another recent revival, much anticipated each year, has been the Company of Authors, now an annual event showcasing recently published authors from the Stanford community. In the past couple of years this event has taken the form of an afternoon of talks, book sales, signing, and conversation, designed by Professor Peter Stansky. Authors participating included special guest Joseph Kanon, author of Los Alamos, A Prodigal Spy, The Good German, and most recently, Alibi; Edith Gelles (The Letters of Abigail Levy Franks); Patrick Hunt (Caravaggio); and Ronald Bracewell (Trees of Stanford and Environs).


Additionally, members of the Associates supported the Stanford University Libraries by serving as readers and assisting -with the administration of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, first awarded as noted above in 2003. We fully expect the partnership to continue to the benefit of all concerned.

Early in the 2003 academic year, members of ASUL and Gleeson Library Associates (University of San Francisco) joined forces for an international tour, "Castles, Cathedrals, and Libraries of Northumbria: A Personal Journey with Stanford Professor George Hardin Brown." Professor Brown, then ASUL chairman, took participants to Durham, Lindisfarne, Longhorsely, Newcastle, Jarrow, York, -and Castle Howard. A primary focus of this trip was to view manuscripts central to the history of western civilization, thousand-year-old treasures that have helped to shape the way we think and live.
More information about The Associates of Stanford University Libraries can be seen at http://library.stanford.edu/-depts/asul/.

Passages

Generations of alumni, patrons and friends cherish memories of their time in the library, much as we cherish our memories of those who have enjoyed their time with us, and have now passed on. As is customary, I wish to acknowledge here the great generosity and friendship extended to us by our late friends and donors.

Cecil H. Green, for whom Stanford's main library is named, as is the Green Earth Sciences building, and whose generosity made the building of the main library's East Wing possible, died at the age of 102 in La Jolla on April 12, 2003.

Cecil Green was the last living member of the four founders of Texas Instruments. Two of the other three, Eugene McDermott and J. Erik Jonsson, have spaces named for them in the Bing Wing. The Ida Green conference room, also in the Bing Wing, is named for Cecil's late wife, Ida Mabelle Flansburgh Green, who died in 1986. In 1987 Cecil provided an endowment to support a new chair: the Ida M. Green Director of University Libraries, now named the Ida M. Green University Librarian. Years later the University Libraries and the School of Earth Sciences established a book fund in Cecil's name, with a host of friends and donors providing this endowment in his honor for perpetual support of acquisitions for the Branner Library in the School of Earth Sciences.

Antoinette Howell, together with her late husband, rare book dealer Warren Howell, of John Howell Books, was another of our staunch and much beloved friends and donors. She died in San Francisco on November 2, 2003, aged 88. For the Stanford Libraries, Warren and Antoinette established the Howell Award, in recognition of extraordinary contributions to the book arts in general and to the Stanford Libraries in particular. Antoinette had an amazing fund of stories regarding the travels she and Warren undertook in their search for rare books. One story she loved to tell concerned a flight back from Europe, during which Warren and his books occupied two seats in first class, while Antoinette sat in economy. She had many friends, who recall her as a positive and happy person with a ready smile and a wonderful sense of humor.

Dr. Carl M. Franklin, Vice President Emeritus and Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, died September 6, 2004 of pneumonia, following a stroke the previous April. He was 93. Carl enjoyed a long and distinguished career in law and was very civic minded. He was a supporter of many causes and charities, and was greatly trusted as a financial manager, investor, and legal advisor. He was named to serve as a trustee of many charitable trusts, and participated in donating to colleges, universities, hospitals, and other charities throughout the United States, but predominantly in California. For the Stanford Libraries, Carl and his wife Carolyn Craig Franklin endowed the Carl Mason Franklin and Carolyn Craig Franklin Endowed Book Fund, and the Carl Mason Franklin and Carolyn Craig Franklin Endowed Book Fund in English Literature. Carl's generosity continued in death: in his will and living trust, he specified that his estate should go to four entities, including Stanford.

In our professional lives, we are known by our accomplishments and by our friends.  This section has provided brief highlights of both in order to create a broad context, a sort of tapestry, for the descriptions and testimonials in the other sections of this report.

Michael A. Keller
The Ida M. Green University Librarian
Director of Academic Information Resources
Publisher, HighWire Press
Publisher, Stanford University Press

 

 

 
   
     
       
Last modified: March 5, 2007
   
© Stanford University. Stanford, CA 94305. (650) 723-2300. Terms of Use | Copyright Complaints