From the Princeton Weekly Bulletin, March 31, 1997
University librarian
defines prioritiesBy Sally Freedman
Karin Trainer got her first job as a librarian in the cataloging department of Firestone Library in 1972. Twenty-five years later, she came back to run the place.
As University librarian since July 1996, Trainer is in charge not only of Firestone but of all 19 Princeton University Libraries, containing more than five million printed works, 35,000 linear feet of manuscripts, and substantial serial, microform and special collections. She also manages a staff of 350 people.
When Trainer talks about her job, it's people she talks about. Over the past nine months, she has talked to "hundreds" of people who use the library -- faculty members, visiting scholars, graduate students, undergraduates -- in a regular program of meetings all around campus, designed to familiarize her with what users want and need from their libraries. A priority for her, she says, is "helping the library staff analyze acquisitions to make sure we're buying the right things."
In her discussions on campus, Trainer has found that "Graduate students are particularly good advisers, because they use so many of our services. They all say 'I'd be lost without the library,' and not a few say that the quality of the library was a significant factor in their choice of Princeton for graduate school.
"In talking with undergraduates and recent alumni," she adds, "I hear over and over how valuable these Princetonians feel their independent work was, and how important the library was for the research they had to do. I would say that Princeton's focus on undergraduate independent work shapes what we do at the library to a significant degree."
User access "too inefficient"
By many measures of size and quality, Princeton compares favorably with other university libraries, Trainer says, but by one measure there's no comparison: "We circulate many more books per capita per year."
The question of user access to the collections is one that inspires a wryly raised eyebrow and a look of determination on the face of the new University librarian.
"Currently," she points out, "a reader doing a comprehensive search at Princeton has to negotiate three catalogs: the online catalog, the scanned card catalog and the GEAC circulation system, plus some paper files. It's just too inefficient to expect readers to cope with it."
But a solution is on the way, and this is another of Trainer's top priorities. The library is in the process of creating an integrated system, incorporating a number of recent technological advances, so that users of the future will be able, says Trainer, "to search all the collections at once, by title, author, subject or key word; to find out circulation status; to place holds on books charged out; and to print a list of titles they've already checked out. They'll also be able to link directly to the library's collections of online database, texts and journals."
The first step was taken a year and a half ago, before Trainer took up her position at Princeton. The library contracted with Ameritech Library Services Inc. to buy and install a system called Horizon, which is being developed with the University of Chicago and Indiana University. This will provide a shell that will be customized for Princeton. Trainer anticipates implementation "in 1997 or 1998, once we're convinced it will work as it should."
Burgeoning paper publications
Trainer came to Princeton from Yale, where she was associate university librarian for 13 years.
"Princeton is exactly half the size of Yale," she says, "both in the size of the library collections and in the size of the staff -- Yale, of course, has several large professional schools, such as law and medicine, that Princeton doesn't."
But the work at Princeton, she finds, is "not very different from Yale. Because of the smaller size, I would say it's a little easier to know people and keep in touch with their work -- and the closer you are, the easier it is to make sure you're acquiring the right things and to learn about new directions in research.
"But perhaps more meaningful than the differences between Princeton and other major U.S. research libraries (like Yale) are the challenges we share -- for instance, trying to cope with the burgeoning of paper publication around the world. People have been led to believe that computers are making paper obsolete, but in fact, paper publication is growing, not only in the United States and Europe but in countries that haven't had much paper output until recently.
"And the cost of acquiring all this paper is rising much faster than inflation. The prices for serials go up nine to 11 percent a year. We hope eventually to change the shape of paper publishing -- but that won't happen very soon."
In addition to coping with more and more paper, libraries have to cope with increasing amounts of material in digital form -- electronic reference tools, maps and atlases, government publications, statistical data, and literary and historical texts.
"The amount of electronic material we ought to provide access to is going up exponentially," Trainer says. "This material has many advantages. It makes available a vast amount of information in a form that allows scholars and students to work in remote locations, at any time of day. But the product can be baffling to readers who often don't have the time to be constantly mastering new software, troubleshooting modems and so on."
House calls, help desks, seminars
Trainer's solution for this problem -- or at least some part of it -- is to expand the library's capacity for assistance in these areas.
"We have an obligation to keep up with software that's easy to use, with indexes that work. We need to spend more time in cooperation with CIT to find ways to be a presence in academic departments, so that when a faculty member (for instance) can't get access online, someone can come and help."
Does she, can she mean house calls?
"Well, something like that," she says. "'House calls,' help desks, seminars, meetings with classes, home pages people can log onto at hours when the library is closed. We need to do more to make it possible for people to use our electronic resources -- and we need to add that responsibility to our other responsibilities of preserving the libraries' remarkable collections and adding to them."
While Trainer would like to have more staff for all these efforts, she is realistic about the financial climate.
"Of course I could use more people," she says, "but I don't expect the staff to grow. I think the key is making the most of the staff we have. We need to provide people with the chance to develop new skills to make all the libraries' activities as effective as they can, and to create an atmosphere that allows staff to do the best work they're able to do."
Trainer earned her MS in library and information science at Drexel University in 1972. In 1978 she went to New York University Libraries as director of technical and automated services, and she worked there for five years, while also earning a master's degree at NYU in liberal studies. A graduate of Douglass College at Rutgers University, she did graduate work in English at Bryn Mawr College for a year.
"I've had a wonderful welcome," she says, "and I couldn't be happier to be back at Princeton."
And she has one more Princeton connection: her husband, William Stowe, an English Professor at Wesleyan University, is a member of the Class of 1968.