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“Today's libraries are incubators, collaboratories, the modern equivalent of the 17th-century coffeehouse: part information market, part knowledge warehouse, with some workshop thrown in for good measure.” –Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
This quote is at the bottom of Mustafa Sakarya’s email signature, and on the top of his mind as director of Sarah Lawrence College’s Esther Raushenbush Library.
A career librarian, educator, and artist, Sakarya took the reins as library director in December 2021. In addition to the main library, he oversees the talented staff and resources of the College Archives, the Visual Resources Library, and the Music Library. In the announcement of his hiring, Sakarya said, “I see the academic library as a scholarly workshop for ideas and solutions, where students create new knowledge with innovative tools and acquire a range of research and digital skills.” Just over one year into his tenure, he’s putting that theory into practice daily.
Last year, as students emerged from the isolation of the pandemic, there was a clear desire for connectedness and community on campus. With the library being one of the most heavily trafficked buildings at SLC, Sakarya recognized its unique potential to provide that connectedness and community and, in turn, have a positive impact on student well-being. And so began a reimagining of the traditional academic library, and the pursuit of redefining the Esther Raushenbush Library’s role on campus and in students’ lives.
“We took a risk by reimagining the traditional academic library,” Sakarya said. “But at a place like Sarah Lawrence, whose mission has always focused on creative, interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning, there’s a real openness to a library that provides more than just information access. Through collaboration and creativity, the library is fast becoming a resource of joy, fun, optimism, and artistic expression.”
Sakarya’s ideas for the library are as seemingly endless as the books that fill its three floors of stacks. A common theme in initiatives and programs launched so far has been two-fold: they are low budget and they often leverage the interests, skills, and talents of library staff. Tim Kail, Public Services and Digital Commons Assistant, has lent his natural talent as a storyteller to the creation of The Sarah Lawrence Library Podcast, which, in weekly installments, tells the Sarah Lawrence story through the personal and professional experiences of its staff, faculty, and students.
“The Library Podcast serves a dual purpose,” said Sakarya. “It helps with our goal of building community and helping people feel connected while also serving an important archival purpose, capturing and preserving the soul and identity of Sarah Lawrence in the 2020s.”
Kail has also lent his curiosity and penchant for tinkering to another library initiative, building a Prusa i3 MK3S+ 3D printer for student use. Sakarya sees the printer as a way of enhancing students’ scholarly work. For instance, a student researching and writing a historical conference paper can make use of the printer to recreate a historical item, rather than just write about it.
Sakarya also sees the 3D printer working hand-in-hand with another new implement that’s soon to be rolled out to students—a sewing machine. Sarah Lawrence students have long shown an interest in fashion, specifically in learning how to create, modify, and repair their own clothes. In a survey Sakarya conducted, access to a sewing machine was at the top of the list of student interests. As luck would have it, Digital Humanities Librarian Claudia Berger is a proficient seamstress. Sakarya received a donated Singer 288 Fashion Mate, which Berger is in the process of getting up and running for student use. Sakarya looks forward to the day when a student puts the library’s newest “tools for creation” as he calls them together—making an article of clothing on the sewing machine, and building buttons for it on the 3D printer.
Berger’s role—Digital Humanities Librarian—is itself new to SLC. When a staff departure left an opening for a new librarian, Sakarya jumped at the chance to make the case for a digital humanities librarian, someone dedicated to helping students and faculty apply digital tools and methodologies to traditional disciplines such as literature, philosophy, and history. Berger’s work so far has been diverse, and includes a critical partnership with faculty and students in the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) as they embark on work funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times grant.
While the people at the Esther Raushenbush Library are central to its transformation and critical to its potential, so too is the building itself. Erected in 1974, a bit reminiscent of a castle, and filled with nooks and crannies eager to spark inspiration, the physical space of the library is something Sakarya sees as a canvas. To that end, his very first undertaking as director was to cover the walls of study rooms with dry-erase paint, inviting students to openly graffiti. The result: bland walls transformed into sounding boards for inspirational comments, candid venting, drawings, and stories.
The library as a canvas was further on display when Sakarya partnered with students to create Raushenbush Castle, an elaborate Halloween installation that made a huge splash on social media. Halloween also provided the opportunity to dive into what Sakarya calls “activating the archive.” During Halloween weekend, when students were dressed up and heading to various festivities, a student photographer set up a photo booth in the Barbara Walters Campus Center to capture images of students at a moment of peak creative expression. “The library is the steward of our memory,” said Sakarya. “That memory won’t be there for those who come after us unless we create it. I want future generations at Sarah Lawrence to be able to look back in time through our Archives and really understand what students were doing and thinking in 2023.”
Thinking ahead to the future potential of the library as a dynamic creative space, the sky’s the limit. But regardless of what changes and innovations may come, one thing will never change: “Libraries in general, and our library in particular, remain a place of peaceful, positive openness,” Sakarya said. “A place where all perspectives are welcome.”