Interview with the Author: Anna Neatrour on The High Impact Digital Library

Many different types of libraries have digital components, and it is important to get those digital collections in front of stakeholders. Librarians in special libraries can gain valuable insight into what libraries in other contexts are doing to promote their digital collections.

Anna Neatrour is a co-author of the book The High-Impact Digital Library. My interview with her is below.

Please introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Anna Neatrour, Head of Digital Library Services at the University of Utah. I oversee departments that contribute to the growth of our digital library (the J. Willard Marriott Digital Library).

We support digitization, digital preservation, descriptive metadata, digital exhibits, and the Utah Digital Newspapers program. We have a team of people who worked on the book, primarily from the University of Utah, but my co-authors all have experience with different aspects of digital library programs.

Briefly summarize The High-Impact Digital Library.

The High-Impact Digital Library explores how people in digital libraries create impact through outreach and promotion, through discussing the results of a national survey, in-depth interviews with digital library workers, and detailed case studies that highlight innovative ways people have collaborated with community members outside their institutions.

Why did you decide to write this book?

We originally came up with the idea for the book when we were talking about the various outreach programs and teaching we engage in. Outreach is not generally an expected part of the job for people who are primarily in the Information Technology divisions in libraries, but we were all doing it. We became curious to see how many other librarians also engaged in activities that might traditionally be thought of as public services work—such as teaching, partnering with faculty, and developing promotional strategies.

Why is outreach important for digital libraries?

While most digital libraries can expect a certain amount of traffic just through search engines, raising awareness of the materials in digital libraries is extremely important, both for people within the organization and researchers. If they do not have a sense of what is available, they might not take full advantage of the valuable primary sources that libraries have digitized to support their information needs.

How can librarians outside academic institutions best use the volume?

Non-academic institutions also have digital libraries! While academic institutions represent the majority of our case studies and interviews, we did connect with people at public libraries and tried to highlight their experience and highlight some innovative examples of digital library work done in a variety of settings. One chapter also functions as a selected annotated bibliography that provides quick information about a variety of digital library projects that anyone might want to take inspiration from or recommend to library patrons.

What do you see as the main areas of future growth for digital libraries?

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a variety of libraries to get involved with community-based crowdsourced projects as well as with born-digital oral histories. I am curious to see what happens in the next ten years with both of these areas. For libraries with Special Collections, these unique materials and the potential for greater access through digitization is a perennial area of growth. It will also be interesting to see what the impact of Artificial Intelligence will be on the field.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

No, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the book!