2019–2020 ANNUAL REPORT Explore. Discover. Create.
CONTENTS 1 Message from the Dean 2 Explore 6 Discover 10 Create 12 Pepperdine Libraries by the Numbers 14 Payson Events 16 Spiritual Formation and RISE
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN Pepperdine Libraries provide a global gateway to knowledge, serving the diverse and changing needs of our learning community through personalized service at our campus locations and rich computer-based resources. At the academic heart of our educational environment, our libraries are sanctuaries for study, learning, and research, encouraging discovery, contemplation, social discourse, and creative expression. As the information universe continues to evolve, our goal is to remain responsive to users’ needs by providing seamless access to both print and digital resources essential for learning, teaching, and research. In pursuit of this goal, we strive to make a positive impact on the lives of our students and faculty so they are equipped to change the world. The end of the 2019–2020 academic year was one none of us could have ever imagined. Nevertheless, University students, faculty, and staff confronted these challenging times with tenacity and grace. Guided by the University’s Christian mission, Pepperdine Libraries were honored to serve our learning community by facilitating exploration, discovery, and creativity. It is our pleasure to share with you some highlights from this past academic year. Sincerely, Mark S. Roosa, PhD Dean of Libraries Pepperdine University
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EXPLORE We strive to make exploration of the libraries’ wealth of resources a joyful, enriching, and seamless experience. Our digital and analog collections, knowledgeable librarians, and unique spaces and labs make the exploration process rich and engaging. When the pandemic required us to move online, we responded by increasing digital resources and engagement with our faculty. During this time, we saw a significant uptick in online usage. For instance, ebook downloads increased by 207 percent and video plays on Kanopy and Swank jumped 294 percent from March 16 through April 30 as compared with the same period the previous year.
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Pepperdine University Libraries
New Special Collections Acquisitions To support student and faculty academic work, we added some extraordinary print and digital resources, including the personal archive of Marion Thompson Wright (bottom, left), the first African American woman to receive a doctoral degree in history at Columbia University. Upon the recommendation of Pepperdine students in a literature class, we acquired an original 1920 copy of Angelina W. Grimké’s Rachel, one of the first plays to protest racial injustice. We also acquired television ephemera, including the final script and still photographs for Julia, praised for being one of the first sitcoms to feature a Black woman in a professional role. We expanded our holdings of rare books with three critically important manuscripts: a liturgical prayer book from c. 1475–1500, a choir book from c. 1572 (top, left), and a heraldry book from c. 1590–1600 (right). Other important special collections acquisitions included a 16thcentury book on architectural perspective and a 1784 copy of the Massachusetts Spy, a newspaper whose masthead was engraved by Paul Revere.
The Churches of Christ Heritage Center Collection “Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life.” — Sidney Sheldon, novelist
The Churches of Christ Heritage Center, which contains the most complete collection of Restoration Church materials in the western United States, added significant papers, documents, and photographs to its growing archives, including those of Frances Easley (1903–1990) and Russel Squire (1908–1997), both pioneer members of the faculty at George Pepperdine College in 1937. An important collection of bound periodicals published by British Churches of Christ between 1835 and 1909 was also added to the Heritage Center’s extraordinary holdings.
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EXPLORE Significant Electronic Resources Added We made significant additions to our growing e-resource portfolio to encourage and support research: •
Offered a curated ebook collection through OverDrive’s Libby app, available at pepperdine.overdrive.com
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Subscribed to Academic Video Online, giving users full access to more than 65,000 streaming videos
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Purchased a subscription to the National Theatre database
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Added 3,095 new ebooks to our collection
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Received a two-year gift subscription to Barron’s in Education database courtesy of Caruso School of Law alumnus David Adishian (JD ’94)
Additionally, in response to COVID-19, many new items became available from publishers offering temporary free subscriptions.
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Pepperdine University Libraries
New Items Added to Digital Collections All issues of the Graphic, Pepperdine’s student newspaper, were scanned and uploaded to our server. The collection is full-text searchable, providing an entry point into Pepperdine, Malibu, and Los Angeles history. It also offers insight into the student experience, a perspective that can be difficult to find in archival collections. We continued digitizing the Malibu Times, and we now have all issues scanned and searchable through 1980. Born-digital issues from 2003 to 2020 were also added to the archive. To see past issues, log on to pepperdine.contentdm.oclc.org.
Keeping Current with Digitization Best Practices We’ve recently added state-of-the-art equipment to our digitization lab to increase processing efficiency. These upgrades include the acquisition of a modular book cradle (left) to digitize bound materials.
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DISCOVER We provide many ways to discover the vast resources available at the libraries. You can work with one of our knowledgeable librarians and reference the useful InfoGuides they have created. Or you can do it yourself by searching our catalog, reference materials, and databases. Pepperdine Libraries took several steps to foster discovery this academic year. For instance, we moved our collection of theses and dissertations by Pepperdine graduate students to our digital publication platform Digital Commons, which is optimized for search engines. More than 460,000 papers were downloaded. View the research at digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu.
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Pepperdine University Libraries
Encouraging Students to Be Critical Information Consumers In a 2010 interview, the author Neil Gaiman said “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers; a librarian can bring you back the right one.” This oft-quoted statement speaks to the overload of knowledge available and how librarians have the information literacy skills needed to sift through it and help students find the materials they seek. At Pepperdine our librarians are fearless knowledge navigators. In a sea of overwhelming data, they have the expertise to help students discover accurate and reliable information. During the 2019–2020 academic year, more than 4,000 students participated in information literacy instruction led by our knowledge navigation team.
Supporting Students During COVID-19 “When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day.” — Jean Fritz, children’s literature writer
Pepperdine students took full advantage of our remote services as classes moved online in March. In one instance, a student collaborating with a professor needed a comprehensive literature review. One of our librarians referred her to a database that sorts articles based on how often they are cited. In another instance, a student researching the top foreign markets for sportswear was shown by a librarian how to obtain this data from a library database. Examples like these demonstrate our librarians’ resourcefulness and their willingness to help our students.
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DISCOVER Serving Our Faculty Colleagues Our librarians are continually reaching out to faculty, alerting them to our resources and offering help and instruction—efforts that increased dramatically after classes went online in the spring. Here are some of the ways they supported our faculty colleagues:
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Obtained materials for classes, including looking for additional ebooks on a subject or topic
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Offered remote library research instruction and research help to students by visiting online classes via Zoom
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Met with students for research consultation appointments via Zoom
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Created and updated InfoGuides with electronic resources that are available remotely
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Scheduled online meetings with faculty members to discuss how they could support their teaching with the above methods
Pepperdine University Libraries
Enhancing Discovery of Library Resources Last summer we updated our catalog to WorldCat Discovery, which allows patrons to easily find resources available from Pepperdine Libraries and other libraries worldwide. An exciting feature of the new platform is a virtual browser that displays all of the libraries’ holdings arranged in shelf order. Additionally, we introduced a one-step search for the growing number of ebooks available to the Pepperdine community. Try it out at library. pepperdine.edu/collections/general.
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CREATE The creation of knowledge from information is an important measure of a library's utility. We helped foster this knowledge creation by supporting student scholarly work, strengthening digital humanities, and making available resources in the Genesis Lab that hone problem-solving skills. Countless research papers and class projects were produced using the libraries’ resources. Many faculty members partnered with Pepperdine Libraries to use the physical space for visiting scholars to present on a broad array of topics. As the result of an ongoing collaboration between Pepperdine Libraries and the Humanities and Teacher Education Division, digital humanities students created a website dedicated to Margaret Brock, one of Pepperdine’s major donors and an important figure in California politics from the 1950s to the 1990s. Brock’s archives are held at Pepperdine. The Genesis Lab gives students an avenue to exercise their creative side by designing and printing objects on a 3D printer. It also encourages creativity through gaming and virtual reality. The lab hosted several events including an ornament-making activity and a website-building workshop.
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Pepperdine University Libraries
Enhancing the Student Experience in the Genesis Lab with VR Our partnership with the Fine Arts Division to host lectures by artists working in virtual reality continued when we cosponsored a presentation by Canadian artist Paisley Smith in the fall. The talk was followed by a viewing of her VR works Unceded Territories and Homestay in the Genesis Lab. Pepperdine Libraries purchased copies of these pieces, which have already been incorporated into a wide array of class visits. The event inspired a number of students to return to the lab to create their own immersive artworks. “A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.” — Norman Cousins, political journalist and author
Objects in Special Collections Offer Students Unique Opportunities in Primary Source Research A growing number of students conducted research using objects from the Boone Special Collections and University Archives. To promote this work, Pepperdine Libraries hosted an energetic Teaching with Special Collections workshop for faculty. Special collections librarians then collaborated with faculty to help design projects and assignments. The impact of our efforts was evident. For instance, a 16th-century heraldic manuscript from our collections formed the basis for one student group’s research in an art history class. These students identified valuable insights about the imagery in the manuscript, while other student groups looked at early printed illustrations in various collection objects.
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PEPPERDINE LIBRARIES BY THE NUMBERS 2019–2020
574,536
626,161
Visits
Website Pageviews
$273,532
Total Income (Grants, Gifts, and Endowments)
1,429
Research Papers Added to Digital Commons
1,727
Reference Questions Answered
76,461
Ebook Usage* (Chapters and Full Titles)
472,711 E-Serial Usage* (Journals)
*2019 calendar year
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Pepperdine University Libraries
24%
Increase in Instagram Followers
5,602
Objects Added to Digital Collections
Pepperdine Libraries Receives Grant from California Humanities In December California Humanities awarded Pepperdine Libraries $19,815 for our Preserving the History of South Los Angeles: A Community Digitization Initiative project. The two-year grant will fund a project that documents, preserves, and shares the history of South Los Angeles, one of America’s most vibrant African American communities. Pepperdine Libraries and its partners will organize a series of community digitization events to catalog and preserve artifacts, documents, and memories of the African American experience in South Los Angeles between the 1930s and 1970s.
Totals
Items Available
2.2 M
Via Catalog
2.8 B
Via Interlibrary Loan
500,000 + Ebooks Available
7,337 129
Electronic Databases
3.3 M
Downloads from Pepperdine Digital Commons
Research Papers Available in Digital Commons
400,000 + Objects in Digital Collections
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PAYSON EVENTS During the 2019–2020 academic year, Pepperdine Libraries hosted a diverse array of events enjoyed by students, faculty, staff, and members of the Malibu community. Programs varied in scope and size and offered a range of viewpoints. We screened In Their Shoes, a powerful documentary about a writing program that helped prisoners prepare for reentry into society. Pepperdine professor Joi Carr sat down with Jordan Carpenter (top, left) and talked with him about his career as a budding portrait artist. During our annual Envisioning Modern California lecture, we were honored to host Stanford professor Gordon H. Chang (right, pictured with dean Mark Roosa), who spoke on the often hidden history of the Chinese workers who built the transcontinental railroad. Additionally, we hosted monthly recitals by the talented students of world-renowned guitar virtuoso Christopher Parkening. It was a blockbuster year for exhibits at Payson Library. As part of our ongoing collaboration with the GRAMMY® Museum, in the fall we hosted the exhibition And The GRAMMY® Goes To . . .. The show featured a selection of official posters alongside portraits taken backstage. Kaitlyn Nader (bottom, left), the museum’s director of community engagement, offered welcome remarks during the opening reception. In the spring, we presented iconic works by internationally renowned photographer Leigh Wiener. The exhibition offered intimate snapshots of Hollywood legends, Jazz Age greats, US presidents, and other leading figures in 20th-century America.
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Pepperdine University Libraries
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SPIRITUAL FORMATION AND RISE For the Libraries, Faith and Service Go Hand in Hand Pepperdine Libraries’ spiritual formation committee identifies and shares ways in which library employees might grow in spiritual awareness as informed by Christian values, beliefs, and practices. The committee organized two volunteer activities, the first occurring on Step Forward Day, the University’s annual day of service. The library group went to Calvary Christian School and Church to help organize the children’s ministry supply closets. There they sorted, organized, and labeled costumes, games, toys, and art supplies. The second activity brought our volunteers to the Malibu Elementary School library (right) to catalog and process new books, create book covers, and organize shelving.
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Pepperdine University Libraries
Embracing the New RISE Initiative at Pepperdine As part of the University’s new ResilienceInformed Skills Education (RISE) initiative, Pepperdine Libraries made providing mental health resources a priority. We supported well-being by creating a Mental Health Resources InfoGuide and setting up a display of books on the subject at Payson Library. In collaboration with the Student Wellness Advisory Board, we transformed the Surfboard Room into a relaxation room for a day, and later we brought therapy dogs to hang out at Payson to help students cope with stress from final exams. The universality of stress was validated for students when Emmy Award–winning actor Tony Hale (Arrested Development, Veep, Toy Story 4) spoke at Payson Library about his struggles with anxiety, an event copresented by the Counseling Center.
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