Crimson and Gold Connection; Randy Roberts

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection. I'm Michael Karn, and today our guest is Randy Roberts, the Dean of Library Services at Leonardaxe Library on campus of Pittsburgh State University. Randy, it's a pleasure having you with us today. Thank you very much, I'm glad to be here. Yeah, absolutely. So we're gonna go and start things off. Let's talk about your background, but you've almost reached 20 years of service here at Pittsburgh State, is that right? I know, I'm getting very close. I started in 1997, and it was a student here way back in the 70s and 80s, so a long time acquaintance ship with the campus. Well, that's perfect, and you definitely show that you're pride for the university and everything like that. So why don't you go ahead and tell us exactly what you've done on campus before and how you got into the role that you're in now. Sure, that was a student history major. Came back in 1997 to be curator of special collections and university archivist and had the great fortune to be in that role, a wonderful opportunity for me, and then moved into the Dean's position at the library just a few years ago. I mean, that's fantastic, so within that position, what exactly are your daily tasks or monthly tasks

that you may have? Oh, well, there's personnel that you manage and supervise and work with on a daily basis, faculty and staff. Also, you work with the financial things, but a very important part for me is connecting with students, as well as our faculty, as well as our community, and see what their needs are and try to meet those needs through having the best resources, best spaces that we can. Well, the actual main reason why we do have you here today is because we're pretty excited on the renovations that are currently happening at Leonard Axe Library. Now, what exactly is going on and what can we expect in the future? Okay. There's several great things going on that we're really excited about. A couple of years back, we had the opportunity to bring the Riding Center from the English Department, as well as the Student Success Center from enrollment management into the library as our partners, and that's just been a great relationship. So Dexel's in there with a coffee shop, so come by for your coffee and refreshments. And so that's been excellent.

But this summer, a couple of things have been going on, and one is we've remodeled a significant space within the library to try to better meet the needs of students. So we've created some new spaces on the lower level this summer as kind of a phase one of a remodel project that we hope touches the building over the next five or six years from top to bottom. Well, that's great. I kind of read a little bit of something, you know, certain like technology spaces are going to be coming in. Now, being a broadcast former undergraduate, oh man, this sounds exciting. So tell me about that. Oh, you've got to come over and play with us. We've got some, we've got some variety of spaces. And five rooms that we've created are available to students to reserve. They can go online to our library website or the community can as well, faculty and staff can. And these are study spaces, collaboration spaces. But a new thing for the library, a new service that we're trying to provide is to create some video and audio spaces as well. And so we've got a green screen wall

with movie cameras, editing equipment, sound equipment, microphones, lighting, everything over there. And so people can come and check out those spaces, check out the equipment that we have available. And do all kinds of projects with that. We hope the community as well as students and faculty and staff make great use of these spaces. Sounds exciting. I know there would be late nights in the broadcasting lab for myself, you know, that there would be times that I would, you know, have to also do things in the library. So I mean, I definitely think that this would be useful for students in the long run and as well as the community as you say. Yeah, we hope so. And we hope students make use of it in a variety of ways. Not only for projects that they're turning in for classes, but also just for personal hobbies and interests as well. And we know that in this day and age, students need spaces sometimes to do online interviews or to create a little video interview of themselves that they mail off for an internship or for a position. So we just see kind of an endless variety of ways in which people can use these new spaces

and we're excited to be able to provide that. So when it comes to the construction progress, you know, what phase are we in and how long will construction continue? Well, we kind of look back to the writing center and student success as phase one, but this is kind of known as phase one, since there's been a gap in between. And so we're looking at about six summers. We won't close down for any of these. Well, we'll stay open and provide service, but we will have different areas of the library from top to bottom be a abbreviated model. And so we're looking at maybe next year trying to do the third floor, creating that into some different environments for our students, some quiet study spaces as well as some additional rooms that they can reserve for group projects and collaboration. So as I said, over the years, the whole building we think will be touched and will be changed very dramatically for our students. That's great. Why exactly is all this progressive movement for the library happening? Well, academic libraries across the country are changing

and that's a reflection of several things. One is technology, the kinds of resources we provide today, much more of an online, which means that we have less need for physical materials. But more importantly, I think the students are looking for a wider variety of services the way that the library faculty and staff can impact them and also the kinds of spaces that we provide. So for us, this is a big change and part of a national movement. Students do assignments in different ways today. They produce different products. They are asked by their instructors to work together differently. And so we're trying to be responsive into that and help our students be successful in every way possible. Being a recent graduate of Pittsburgh State, I can definitely tell you that with all this technology advancements, you kind of have to have that hybrid type of being a studious in a sense. And I definitely think that's great and I think we are all heading in the right direction, especially with the library as it sounds. We hope so.

And we're really excited about it. And our numbers in the library have been up each of the last several years. Students are making use of that. But we've gotten a lot of work to do and to make it the best possible facility for all of our students. Well, I certainly appreciate you coming by, Randy. We certainly enjoy you having a coming in studio and doing this for us. And I know for sure I'll be utilizing those technology rooms here shortly when they're all available for me. Oh, that's fantastic. We hope to see you. Come and come see us. So thank you so much, Randy. Thank you. That was Randy Roberts, the Dean of Library Services at Leonard Axe Library on the campus of Pittsburgh State University. Thank you for joining us here on KRPS for Crimson and Gold Connection that keeps you connected to the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. I'm Michael Karin, and we'll see you next time.