Artemis Kirk

University Librarian
Hometown: in Massachusetts
Time at Georgetown: 13 years

How did you end up at Georgetown?
I came here from a previous position where I was the Director of Libraries at the University of Rhode Island. And before that, I had spent many years as a library director at different institutions. 

How did you become interested in library science?
I was teaching a one-year sabbatical replacement at a college in Massachusetts in music, which is my field, and I needed to put materials on reserve so the students could have access. I had come from some very good schools, which had some very good reserve systems, but the school where I was teaching did not have such a good system, and so they would say, “Well, we can put some things on a shelf and we’ll put your name here,” so people would just go into the library and just take things at will. So, they did take things at will, and we never found them again. And I thought to myself, “You know, I could probably do better here as a librarian, more so than as a teacher of music.” It’s been absolutely wonderful. It’s a great field. Something new to think about every single year.

What are your day-to-day tasks and the big projects you’re working on?
So, big projects are meant to be relating to the university to see what the strategic directions of the university are — to make sure the strategic directions that we have articulated for the library not only fit the university’s, but rather can help transform how the university, how the faculty and how the students of the university can change their teaching, learning and research based on what it is that we have, who we are with our expertise and what kinds of spaces and services we can offer. So my idea is that the library really is a transformational element for the universe, for everything and everybody. So, I try to work on big-picture strategies; I relate to many different committees and offices on campus. Right now, our major projects include organizing how the library is positioning itself as part of designing our future. We’re working with the Association of Research Libraries, which is an organization of about 123 libraries that looks at how we are transforming the institutions that we serve. We’re in a campaign for Georgetown, for generations to come. The library has a $25 million goal, so one of my jobs is to make sure that we’re trying to work with the Advancement Office to meet the goal. And, right now, we just started the Special Collections Research Center renovations, which will do some wonderful things for everybody. For the first time, we will have a classroom where people can actually sit in a high-tech, state-of-the-art environment and be able to look at the manuscripts and the books and the artwork that we have in a classroom setting. So, it’s a long awaited renovation and expansion project. It just got started, and we expect that by next spring, early spring, it will be ready and open for business. That’s been a long project that’s taken us almost four years to get off the ground, but we’re thrilled.

Where do you think the future of libraries are headed?
I think libraries have been evolving all the time, and I think most of that evolution has been transparent to the user. So, for example, a faculty member said to me fairly recently, “I don’t need to go to the library anymore, I just get everything I have online that I need.” And I smiled and said, “The materials that you need, that you think you’re getting completely online without the library, are actually aggregated by us and vetted.” Where libraries will go in the future we’d like to design, rather than try to predict. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the world, but we have adapted to technology. In the future, we know that more universities will continue to require the same kinds of things, especially if they’re in electronic format. Until copyright and intellectual-property regulations and laws change, we aren’t able to share these things electronically because the publishing models right now are still based on a one-institution, one-subscription model. But, there is this huge movement called Open Access that libraries have been a part of. The idea would be that you’re changing the model. Rather than a subscription model, now we’re saying, “Let’s find a way to make all of these materials openly accessible.” How we will pay for it, how the business model evolves from the philosophical model of Open Access, will take some time to sort through. Those are the kinds of big-picture things librarians around the country and around the world are grappling with. So, when I say I’m dealing with strategy issues, it’s not just on this campus, it’s across the field of librarianship. It encompasses technology, and it encompasses special collections. I sincerely hope we will never lose the physical object called a book, but I do believe that over time, people need access to the actual artifact. So, if we had a signature letter by George Washington, sure we could digitize it, you could have access to it. But, if you could come into the library and actually see that document, and you could see the kind of scratches that he might have written with his signature, it’s a whole different experience than just seeing something online — no matter how good the digital version is.

So on a more physical level, what do you think of Lauinger as a building, and do you think it should be preserved?
Absolutely, I think it should be preserved. I’m very fond of this building. We have a wonderful, wonderful master space plan for Lauinger Library that we created with architects. And they have preserved the dignity and integrity of this building, but have redesigned it for the future, so that they add a lot of glass and they expand the building. We would expand behind the building now onto Prospect Street. The idea is that we would revert to mimicking Village A because we would have a kind of terraced look the way their terrace is now. 

How does the library work with students to better itself and to combat any negative perceptions of the library?
I usually show people the great plans that we have. I can tell you that when we were devising the plan with the architects, we sent out a survey. And we got over 2,000 responses from the community, and most people have opinions. Some people like the building, some people don’t like the building — especially if all they see is the facade from Healy lawn. But, if you look at it critically, and you look at it as a moment in architectural history, people decided to reject all of the elaborate things of previous architectural periods and decided to do something stark and new. It seems to me that you could think that the building was meant to embody something more internal than external. As I started to say, we did this questionnaire, and a lot of people said, “Why don’t you look at the Princeton library, the Yale library, the Columbia library or whatever?” But people who bothered to say anything in the comments section said, “I really love the library and librarians, and everything that you’re doing is great.” I can only say that I think Lauinger is a period piece. It existed in time. It will continue to exist in some way or other. Perhaps it will be modified in some way or another. This building was purpose-built as a library and internally, even though it’s too small for us now, it works quite well. The exterior represented a style of the period at the time. I would hope that the building’s exterior doesn’t deter people from using what’s inside.

Interview by Ian Tice