UND Today

University of North Dakota’s Official News Source

In celebration of innovation

UND librarians honored by regional peers for staying ahead of the curve in assisting students and faculty

Zeineb Youssif and Stephanie Walker
UND Dean of Libraries Stephanie Walker (right) is set to receive the 2018 Most Innovative Library Award from the Mountain Plains Association, a collective of libraries across 12 states, at the association’s conference this week in Wichita, Kan. (Above) Walker demonstrates the Scholarly Commons with Zeineb Yousif, digital initiatives librarian, at the Chester Fritz Library. The Scholarly Commons is accessible online and anyone can search for published research, art and documents produced by UND faculty, staff and students. Photo by Jackie Lorentz/UND Today.

A year after the University of North Dakota ranked among U.S. News & World Report’s top 25 most innovative universities, the Chester Fritz Library proved its own inventive verve.

The state’s largest athenaeum received the 2018 Most Innovative Library award from the Mountain Plains Library Association, a collective of libraries across 12 states. Dean of Libraries & Information Resources Stephanie Walker is to accept the prize at this week’s Association conference in Wichita, Kansas.

“It shows that we are fitting in nicely,” said Walker. “I am trying to support OneUND and the strategic plan and by doing that we have managed to ourselves be counted as innovative.”

Walker doesn’t know who nominated the Chester Fritz Library – the Association has not disclosed such details. But when it comes to why the library won, she has a pretty good inkling on the reasons.

“I suspect it was probably because of how well we did with open educational resources,” Walker began. “We have saved our students $6.1 million in three years.”

Innovation: How to study 

Open educational resources (OERs) constitute learning materials that students can access freely online.

After an initial investment of roughly $170,000, there are over 40 different courses that utilize OERs. These are often introductory classes – in topics as disparate as math, psychology and political science – with hundreds of enrollees and costly textbooks.

Walker’s approach to spearheading OERs at UND is as laudable as the concept itself. Prior to her arrival on campus, faculty worried that they would lose the freedom to select instructional publications – as has been the case in other higher-education institutions.

She needed to strongly communicate the non-compulsory yet propitious nature of OERs at the University.

As some professors and lecturers began to come around, the North Dakota University System rallied behind the idea. So did UND student government. It even invested over $70,000 from its reserve fund.

“[The Chester Fritz Library] took the lead moving forward but without the buy-in from campus, we wouldn’t have got very far,” said Walker.

The result: an over 40-to-1 investment that continues to grow and benefit students.

Innovation: Where to study

The Chester Fritz Library is not only ushering new tools for teaching and learning, it is revamping the very space where some of these occur – its four-floor hulk.

“[We are] trying to make it more useful and more user-friendly,” said Walker, adding that the physical, tech-focused revamp further buttresses the library’s worthiness of the award.

The first stage of the overhaul, encompassing a quarter of the library, is to begin in early 2019 with asbestos removal.

A priority for Walker is the addition of more and better group-study rooms, which are “one thing we are always short on.”

But Walker is not dawdling until the start of the renovations to foster change. The library already teems with novel facilities.

The UND Scholarly Commons. The MagicBox. The One Button Studio. A Data Visualization Lab. A Virtual Realty Studio.

The latter two have just taken shape behind Walker’s office, in temporary rooms, with contributed equipment that will help students with data analysis and presentation, animation and 360° video.

Once the reconstruction is complete, the lab and studio will move to the third floor. But Walker did not want students to wait a whole year for them to open.

Stephanie Walker
Walker tries out the One Button Studio setup at the Chester Fritz Library. The technology allows students and professors easy access to on-the-spot video production capabilities that they can save on a thumb drive for future use. Photo by Dima Williams/UND Today.

Incremental, low-cost and purposeful updates seem to be Walker’s style.

The One Button Studio, which opened earlier this semester, responded to demands from faculty and students, seeking a convenient method to record video clips.

Walker made it possible with only $60,000, money she saved by renegotiating the library’s contract with the Online Dakota Information Network.

The inventiveness – or, perhaps, the tenacity – to do a lot with little permeates the Chester Fritz Library. The UND Scholarly Commons, for instance, hold over 13,000 items, classified by a librarian and a couple of students over a year’s time.

Walker put the achievement in perspective, “The University of Texas at Austin had five librarians working on their repository the first year and they got 5,000 items.”

It is not only first-class research that is at the fingertips of library patrons. North Dakota’s past also spills digitally through the MagicBox, an interactive aquarium-like display of historic references funded by a donor.

“All the stuff we managed to do without depending on a lot of taxpayer money,” said Walker. “Now, I have no idea whether the Mountain Plains Library Association thought that was creative, but I think they found all the renovations happening at once in a library that has not been touched since 1981, other than to drop computers in it, interesting.”

Laurie McHenry, head of technical services at Thormodsgard Law Library, was surprised and proud to receive the 2018 Librarian of the Year award from the North Dakota Library Association. Photo by Dima Williams/UND Today.
Laurie McHenry, head of technical services at Thormodsgard Law Library, was surprised and proud to receive the 2018 Librarian of the Year award from the North Dakota Library Association. Photo by Dima Williams/UND Today.

More than one

The Chester Fritz Library is not alone in reaping accolades. Laurie McHenry, head of technical services at UND’s Thormodsgard Law Library, earned the 2018 Librarian of the Year award from the North Dakota Library Association (NDLA) earlier this month.

The honor celebrates McHenry’s years-long dedication to librarianship and to NDLA, where she has held prominent roles such as secretary and president. Currently, she represents NDLA at the American Library Association.

“It makes me very proud,” McHenry said of the distinction.