Anne Kenney, Cornell's newly named Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, plans to "articulate" several issues during her tenure. Among them: "How do you get the library and its resources and services out to where and how people are actually doing their work? What is the library's place in the academy today?"

Kenney, whose appointment was announced on March 31 (and is subject to approval by the Executive Committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees at its April meeting), had served 13 months as interim university librarian, an experience that brought into focus the many issues the Cornell University Library -- one of the largest and best-regarded research libraries in the world -- must address. They include filling a number of senior library management positions, achieving the Library's campaign goal, continuing to invest in special and permanent collections while expanding digital services, tending to an aging infrastructure particularly in regards to renovating Olin Library and ensuring access to the library's assets by Cornell students, faculty and scholars worldwide.

"The opportunities of being at a great university and a great library open doors for us," Kenney said. "I see my role as an enabler and articulator of a vision that will be shaped by deliberations with my colleagues, and to share that vision with the university community, funding bodies and alumni."

Kenney joined the Cornell Library in 1987. In her new role, she said she expects to spend "a good amount of time" helping raise $60 million for the library as part of the current comprehensive campaign. (About one-quarter of that goal has been raised.) "We have strong needs to support the collections and provide services that meet the changing research and learning requirements of faculty, undergraduates and graduate students," she said.

Kenney said she will concentrate on establishing new partnerships and supporting such current efforts as teaming Cornell up with other libraries to purchase journals and other materials at reduced rates, and build upon the success of the Borrow Direct program, which makes a combined 40 million volumes from Ivy League universities available to Cornell students and researchers.

"Arrangements like those are a great way for research libraries to combine forces to meet similar needs and avoid duplication and redundancy of effort," Kenney said. "We want to make sure that resources, which are finite, are used in the best way possible. Cornell is a natural collaborator. We are interested in strategic connections with other research libraries and other partners to bring resources to people who need them."

Kenney is known internationally for her pioneering work in developing standards for digitizing library materials that have been adopted by organizations around the world. So it is not surprising that she sees t echnology playing an ever larger role in the library's efforts to make resources available. That includes curation of "big data" produced in the sciences and social sciences, and supporting e-research.

"Technology is not plateauing, and we have to come to terms with an expanding scholarly environment," she said. "Use of our multimedia collections has skyrocketed. Collaborations with Cornell Information Technologies, the computing and information science faculty and the Center for Academic Computing will be very important."

But traditional book buying is not going away. "We add over 2 miles of shelving every year and we will continue to do that even as we add more and more digital content to our holdings," she said.

As if that weren't enough, Kenney seeks "to maintain our preeminence in collections, to meet local needs, to entice the international scholarly community and to be an important piece of academic recruitment and retention. I'm very proud that half of the users of our special collections are undergraduates, and that Cornell seniors rate the library No. 1 in services on campus. We also contribute to the faculty's satisfaction with their jobs."

Of libraries of the future, Kenney said: "The hallmark of an excellent research library will be in how well it meets the research and scholarly communication needs of faculty and students. The barriers to access are lower and user expectations are higher. Once scholarship is produced and disseminated it remains a living thing. There is commentary surrounding it, refinement of arguments, derivative work that's built on it. Providing those linkages is critical."