Yale’s University Librarian: “Academic Libraries Can No Longer Assume their Importance and Value…”

Sophie Gould:

Yale’s libraries amassed new physical and digital holdings and expanded their influence on academia during the 2011-’12 academic year, University Librarian Susan Gibbons said in an annual report posted on the library’s website last week.
After working at the University for nine years, former University Librarian Alice Prochaska announced in June 2009 that she would be leaving Yale for a position at Oxford. Over the next two years, Yale’s libraries faced a rapidly changing digital world and significant cuts to library budgets under two interim University librarians, Gibbons told the News. But the library gained a measure of stability in July 2011 when Gibbons took over Prochaska’s position, and Gibbons said in her annual report that Yale’s librarians took great strides last year toward meeting modern needs for digital content while balancing their simultaneous roles as librarians, educators and teachers.
“This first year felt as if we were trying to reset ourselves, adjust to the new economic realities and chart a new course forward,” Gibbons said.