The Library in a Research University

Modern research universities are undergoing an important blending and remixing of human knowledge. More and more PhD dissertations tend to use approaches or findings from fields outside the given discipline. This often requires the candidate to study on their own outside their area. Research librarians are helpful to these PhD students as they identify how best to start their self-teaching in a new area.

At the same time that advanced research is evolving in this way, undergraduates at research universities are increasingly engaged in original research. Sometimes they are research assistants to faculty. Sometimes they mount independent studies. The volume of experience-based and research-based learning in universities is increasing, driven both by faculty interest in this as a pedagogical tool and student demands to learn by doing. Students want to learn at the cutting edge of knowledge by encountering that edge in a real project, not a prespecified exercise. Research librarians are often key guides to the initial experiences of undergraduate researchers, as they learn how to self-teaching from materials accessible from research libraries.

During COVID, as I wrote earlier the Lauinger library staff performed these types of duties with zoom, email, and telephone voice calls. Now, Lauinger library, “Lau,” as it’s called among students and faculty, is back to serving students as a chief study space and a portal into library holdings throughout the world. It is a building that has housed activities of the library for many decades. But, many of its systems and its infrastructure need renewal.

As with all central services of the university, it is proper to reconsider from time to time how a library can best serve a research university, as the needs of the faculty, staff, and students change.

In the spirit of exploring how Lau can best serve the Georgetown community, the library leadership is mounting a set of focus groups with faculty, staff, and students. Collectively, these can help create a new vision of the functions of the library for 21st century Georgetown. They may lead to new services for faculty and students in the structure – ideas like a visualization innovation lab, enriched technology-assisted group work rooms and collaboration spaces, etc.

Regarding the structure itself, initial ideas, spurred by student input regarding the lack of natural light in the library, are being sketched out to open up the library to more modern treatment of windows to the outside, especially the southern exposure to the Potomac. To help potential donors imagine what a renovated building could offer library users, it is likely that an initial renovation will target the Pierce reading room on the entrance floor of the library. With the reading room expanded to a new set of windows on the Potomac side of Lau, a much more effective space for research and studying could be constructed. A fundraising effort will target this space first.

A modern research university needs a modern research library. With the Georgetown community working together in a fundraising effort, as part of the next advancement campaign, we are hopeful about renovating Lau in stages to create a proper 21st century edifice with 21st century services.