This has been another extraordinary year for the University Library. We continue to see people and programs return to our buildings, and our impact on SDSU learning, scholarship, and engagement continues to grow.
Thank you for continuing to support our students, staf, and faculty!
Perhaps the best word to describe our work this year is 'innovation " Whether it has been in spaces like Special Collections and University Archives or in collaborative projects such as our work with Mexican libraries to create our "Colecciones de Instituciones Mexicanas," support from our leadership, donors, and external funders has helped us to demonstrate the impact that investment in the library can have on the exciting work that SDSU does in the classroom and beyond.
With your support, we expect this work to continue, with new opportunities to partner with SDSU colleges to bring library collections, services, and spaces together with distinctive academic programs.
Scott Walter, M.L.S., Ph.D. Dean, University Library
Changing Lives through Program Support
Greg Bear Archives
We recently acquired Greg Bear's archives. Bear is a writer of science fction works, including Queen of Angels, Darwin’s Radio, and Blood Music. It is an honor and a privilege to bring this archive home to SDSU, where Bear was once part of our community.
Before his career as an author, Bear was a student of Elizabeth Chater and co-taught the frst science fction class ever to be held at SDSU. He was also involved in the early days of San Diego Comic-Con.
The addition of Greg Bear's papers is a wonderful complement to our science fction and speculative fction collections, which are used by students and scholars from all over the U.S. and abroad. Bear was a prolifc author of science fction and the winner of numerous awards, including the Hugo and Nebula awards. His collection includes publications and manuscripts, correspondence with leading science fction authors, including Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, as well as original artwork. The collection will support original scholarship in the felds of hard science fction.
Josephson Family Children's Endowment
The Josephson Family Children’s Endowment for purchasing children's books helps refresh our collection with new materials that support pre-service teachers in their lesson planning across the curriculum and to buy books that promote diversity of the SDSU collection.
Each semester, SDSU pre-service teachers get together to review and evaluate up to 180 new children's books and it is critical they have new books to review, and the Josephson Endowment makes that possible. Last year, the fund allowed us to buy 84 new books. As this is an annual gift for more than 20 years, thousands of books have been added to our collection through this fund.
A display of new book in the Children's Literature Collection area.
Living the Aztec Experience
Laura Scott, Class of 2024 Class Level: Graduate Student College: College of Arts and Letters Major: History
Laura Scott has worked in the library for three years, and it changed her life plan.
After completing her master's in history, she plans to pursue a degree in library science. She dreams of one day becoming the head of an academic library's archive or special collections department.
Her frst major library project was working with Digital Humanities Librarian Pam Lach. She migrated a physical exhibit on the 1960s Chicano movement in San Diego into a digital one using the Omeka S platform. She spent months creating a bilingual exhibit that was accessible and engaging, resulting in the Chicano Archive Project.
She currently organizes thousands of individual comic books with Pam Jackson, curator of the library’s Comic Arts Collection.
During these two major projects, Laura also worked as a student assistant in Special Collections and University Archives, processing multiple collections independently and discussing archival theory with Archivists Adam Burkhart and Amanda Lanthorne.
She says, “The best part of working for the library is the community. Even on a bad day, I still look forward to coming to work. Everyone has been so helpful and supportive of my future.”
Amanda Kent, Class of 2024 Class Level: Undergraduate Student College: College of Arts and Letters
Major: English
New graduate Amanda Kent says, “Working in the library confrmed my desire to become a librarian, and I start the Master’s in Library Science program at San Jose State in the fall.”
Amanda’s educational journey was interrupted by an abusive marriage, but she persevered.
She frst started community college in 2002 but was unable to continue. She tried again in 2019 but dropped out. Finally, after a divorce, she started at Grossmont Community College and continued at SDSU to study English. She enjoyed the feld but was unsure how she would use the degree.
She started an internship in Special Collections and University Archives, fell in love with archival work, and found her calling. Her internship project was organizing the collection of Science Fiction author Joan Vinge
Amanda took banker’s boxes of novels, manuscripts, letters, photos, and personal correspondence and turned them into an organized collection that can be easily used for research. The process will repeat with the newly donated archives of Joan’s spouse Vernor, another science fction author.
She says, “I love old stuf. I like to see and touch history, so working in the Special Collections area is really exciting.”
Working in the library confrmed my desire to become a librarian, and I start the Master’s in Library Science program at San Jose State in the fall.
Celebrating Shared Success
Statistics of Interest
Number of people entering the library (gate count) for 2023/24 is 1,129,789 or an average of 38,775 per week, 5,539 each day
1,540,443 print volumes and 1,953,621 digital volumes in our collection
44,637 print journals and 273,915 digital journals in our collections
This year, we provided the following services:
738.083 items downloaded from the institutional repository
4,367 digital reference questions
Recent Highlights
This year, added four single-use study rooms to our space. These rooms allow students to reserve a private space for job interviews, telehealth appointments, and Zoom meetings, and were booked 2,369 times over the year.
Our nine reservable group study rooms were used 8,908 times, in addition to the 40 study rooms that are available on a frst-come, frst-served basis.
To meet the growing podcasting needs of the SDSU community, the Digital Humanities Center has launched its new Group/Multitrack Podcasting Studio. The studio has four professional-quality microphones, a multi-channel mixing board that can incorporate remote guests, and studio-quality sound-neutral headphones. It is the only podcasting studio on campus that is available to students, staf, and faculty.
2023 was the frst full year of a new partnership between the Library and the SDSU Bookstore to support “equitable access” (now called "Day 1 Ready") to materials required for SDSU courses. By working together to acquire digital access to required course materials through the library, Scholarly Communications and Open Initiatives Librarian Kate Holvoet and her colleagues helped to save SDSU students a total of $7,794,948, or more than $150 each through the Equitable Access program. Few CSU campuses have achieved the direct impact on educational afordability through Afordable Learning Solutions that SDSU has demonstrated, thanks to the successful collaboration by campus partners.
• 797,571 uses of e-books
• 653 research consultations
• 378 classes with 10,181 participants
Helping to Build a Brighter Future
Lisa Lamont, M.A., M.L.I.S.
Title: Head, Digital Collections College: University Library
Achievement: SDSU was awarded a $336k Humanities Collections and References Resources Grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities for its project, “Preserving and Revealing Tijuana’s Past.”
Continuing their collaboration with the City of Tijuana’s Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (IMAC), a team of experts from the SDSU Library, led by Head of Digital Collections Lisa Lamont (pictured right wearing black top), and the SDSU Center for Regional Sustainability will organize, digitize, and make accessible more than 50,000 photographs, slides, maps, and related materials currently held in the Archivo Histórico de Tijuana.
This NEH implementation grant will build on the foundational work conducted by SDSU and IMAC as part of a pilot project funded in 2022 by the University of California Los Angeles Modern Endangered Archives Program.
Tijuana and San Diego together form a vibrant, binational community distinguished by cultural engagement among U.S. and Mexican nationals and among the Indigenous communities that have made this region their home for thousands of years. The holdings of the Archivo Histórico document the complex society, culture, and politics of a unique border region and the evolution of the City of Tijuana throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Collaboration between SDSU and IMAC will preserve and promote greater access to primary source materials that may be of value to students and scholars in felds such as history, political science, anthropology, urban planning, Latin American studies, and border studies.
The Archivo Histórico is a wonderful municipal archive with a wealth of information about Tijuana and the border region. The grant will enable us to help preserve the important historical materials at the Archivo Histórico and increase access to those materials. We hope this is just the beginning of many future collaborations.
Faculty Achievements
Rebeca Nowicki, M.L.I.S.
Title: Online Learning Librarian College: University Library
Achievement: Online Learning Librarian Rebecca Nowicki ofers the course, “Fighting Misinformation: Locating and Using Reliable Sources for College and Everyday Life" to prepare students to understand sources of information, determine when information is reliable, and how to use information in college and beyond.
“Fighting Misinformation” is a seminar-style class that uses discussions, group projects, and peer-to-peer teaching and learning to help students develop critical information literacy competencies, empower them to advocate for their information hygiene, and encourage others to clean the information environment.
The class has been well received. Maitland Klingberg ‘24 says, “This is the best course you can take! You will most defnitely apply what Professor Nowicki teaches you outside of the classroom. It's a good feeling, knowing that you're wellequipped to face the world of information.”
Nowicki helps her students think critically about information and how to ethically incorporate it into their research and lives. She notes that scholarship is an exploration rather than a static statement of facts. It builds as each new scholar asks, “What is missing?” and “What are the structural biases inherent in how information is created and disseminated?”
Librarians are uniquely suited to teach this type of course because their work is interdisciplinary and because, as information professionals, they are experts in the continuously changing information environment. They help students focus on examining information, not just using it to fulfll a specifc educational goal. She shared the following:
"I am passionate about helping students understand how information fts into their lives. Just because we live in a world where information is easy to access doesn’t mean we are getting information that actually meets our needs. Ideas do not come out of a vacuum. The ideas you have and the decisions you make are all dependent on the quality of information that you have to inform those ideas and decisions, so you need to understand the information so you can be selective about what information you use. You cannot make good decisions without good information!"
Africana Studies Collection
Enhancing Campus and Community
The University Library has created a welcoming and dedicated space on the third foor of Love Library to introduce community members to the print, digital, and archival collections that document and explore the Black experience.
The Africana Studies Collection initiative builds on our successful experience establishing the Chicana/o Collection space.
The space was designed to introduce students and faculty to our collections and to promote and inspire community. The Africana Studies Collection provides a library space to inspire our students just as much as the resources in the collection. In addition to art, artifacts, and representations of Special Collections materials, the space features furniture with Adinkra symbols and uses colors associated with global African culture. One student remarked, “Even the chairs are special here!”
The space includes six study rooms, which are always in high demand for students seeking space to study or collaborate on projects. These rooms will be named for prominent Black leaders from SDSU’s history, selected by an advisory committee, and supported by donors committed to this project. The frst room has been named the Queen Mother Dr. Kathleen Harmon Study Room and has been sponsored by a gift from President Adela de la Torre and Mr. Stephen Bartlett.
"Collecting and preserving this history is vital not only to learning from the past but to creating a brighter future. I am incredibly proud to support SDSU's Africana Studies Collection," said President de la Torre.
The Africana Studies Collection Area also ofers a dynamic space for hosting events, including the Black Resource Center’s Black Research Symposium. Participants noted that the library environment made the symposium “extra extra special.”
The Africana Studies Collection builds upon decades of work to acquire and promote Africana Studies materials. New materials are continually added through collaboration between SDSU librarians, faculty, colleagues, and donors. Materials include academic works as well as contemporary cultural references. Outreach and Diversity Initiatives Librarian Gloria Rhodes describes the collection as “Showcasing who we are as a people.”
The Africana Studies Collection area
Much More than Superheroes
The Comic Arts Collection
The SDSU Comic Arts Collection includes more than 120,000 published comics in all formats, plus ephemera and archival collections. It was used as the foundation of 14 academic courses last year, reaching more than 500 students each semester. It has also inspired research projects by students at every level, and the "Comics Corner" provides a welcome place for a study break for countless students each semester. The current exhibit, Rising Up: Depictions of Social Protests in Comics, has been visited by SDSU students, local K-12 students, and the wider San Diego community. Visitors include a curator from the Smithsonian Museum and a local women’s club in celebration of Juneteenth.
The Comic Arts Collection was started in 2011 with a handful of comics and quickly expanded through gifts from notable donors, including Chris Pendleton, Shawn Mehafey, Dan Hagar, Donna Barr (who donated her life's work), Doug Highsmith, Rob O'Carroll, Jack Sword, J. Gordon Melton (who provided our vampire collection), and Ted Adams and Robbie Robbins (who donated the IDW Founders Collection).
Popular Culture Librarian Pamela Jackson said, "When it comes to the Comic Arts Collection, I pay special attention to collecting comics that celebrate (and complicate) diversity and representation, which document the human condition and shed light on social issues. We continually add titles to the collection that directly support our growing catalog of comics courses at SDSU and tie into the new Certifcate in Comics Studies. Such titles are often related to race, Indigenous cultures, LGBTQIA+ identities, women and feminism, religion, environmentalism and climate change, politics and civics, and propaganda."
“Working closely with the students, I’ve seen their excitement and appreciation for the comics medium grow,” Jackson said. “More importantly, students are developing lifelong critical thinking skills needed to analyze sequential art that can be applied to other visual representations and subject matter in our culture. Plus, our collection is building undergraduate interest in conducting comics research.” This interest has been realized in projects such as “Shocking Tales of Domesticity in EC Comics: The Impact of a Code” by undergraduate student Grace Dearborn.
A growing number of comics-engaged SDSU faculty are continuously developing courses, collaborating on publications, fostering relationships with the San Diego comics community, and developing connections with like-minded faculty across the CSU system.
The current exhibit from the Comic Arts Collection: Rising Up: Depictions of Social Protests in Comics
Providing Resources for Today’s Students and Tomorrow’s Aztecs
Endowments (Active)
Adams Library Endowment
Africana Studies Collection Endowment
Alan J. Gruber Endowment
Albert W. and Susan G. Johnson Endowment
Charles S. Luby and Robin B. Luby Endowment for Library Excellence
Crouch Library Endowment
Edward E. Marsh Golden Age of Science Fiction Endowment
Eleanor Kingsbury Endowment
Elisabeth Kenney Ecke Endowment
Environmental Resources Endowment
Friends of Library Book Endowment
Friends of the Library Rare Books Endowment
Friends of the Library Unrestricted Endowment
Hartung Japanese Library Endowment
Helen Johnson Endowment
EJ.L. and Joann Tanzer Endowment for Art Education
James and Cecelia Allen Endowment
Jerome M. Sattler Endowment
John M. and Barbara M. Hood Library Endowment
Josephson Family Children’s Endowment
Judaic Materials Endowment
Kit Sickels Endowment
Library and information Access Professional Development and Research Endowment
Library Materials Endowment
Louis A. Kenney Endowment
Mary Gleason McLeod Memorial Endowment
Math and Engineering Education Endowment
Norland History of Biology Endowment
The Peoples Temple Collection Endowment
Tom and Marilyn Ross Library Endowment
Vencil T. Meades Endowment
To learn more, please contact Tammy T. Blevins at tblevins@sdsu.edu
