Diane Parr Walker has been the Edward H. Arnold University Librarian since 2011. After ten years at the helm of the Hesburgh Libraries, Diane has decided to retire on July 31, 2021. This summer, Diane shared some highlights and reflections on her time as the University Librarian at Notre Dame and future opportunities for research libraries.

You’re at the end of 10 years as the university librarian. When you first arrived in the role, what key areas presented new growth opportunities?

When I arrived at Notre Dame ten years ago, it seemed to me that the Hesburgh Libraries were poised to make a transformational leap forward to enhance our role as a valued campus partner throughout all stages of teaching, learning and research.

Notre Dame had established a goal of being a top-flight research University. Tom Burish, the provost at the time, told me that in order to be a top-level research institution, Notre Dame needed a top-level library. There were opportunities for growth. I knew it was time to renew our mission and create a new strategic plan. Because research libraries are a complex ecosystem, we needed to move ahead in several areas at once in order to reimagine our role in the teaching and research enterprise in the digital age.

Together, during the course of the past decade, we have expanded a more traditional reference and collections focus to include partnerships across all stages of teaching and research and every academic discipline. This has required us to continuously evolve our expertise, services, resources and spaces to meet the changing demands of our users, in alignment with the University’s goals.

Early on you declared a new mission. Why was this a priority?

Early in my tenure, one of the most common questions I heard was, “What’s the role of the library in the digital age? If books are going digital, why do we need libraries?” It seemed important to shift that narrative and to help people understand that the mission of libraries had never been about printed books.

My answer was, and still is, that the role of the library is connecting people to knowledge, regardless of the format in which the knowledge is contained. People associate libraries with books because for centuries books have been the primary “containers” of knowledge; in the digital age those containers have exploded into many different formats. The library’s job is still to acquire, preserve, organize and steward this knowledge in a way that makes it accessible for study by all scholars now and into the future.

This response led to one of the earliest and most lasting changes during my time at Notre Dame — rearticulating the library’s enduring mission as connecting people to knowledge across geographic locations and throughout the generations. This mission has anchored our work together over the years.

You work in one of the most iconic buildings on campus — how did this influence your vision?

As we worked to clarify that the enduring mission of the library is to connect people to knowledge, we realized that the iconic Word of Life mural perfectly depicts that mission. The large figure of Christ the Teacher with hands uplifted is surrounded by scholars and thinkers from ancient to more recent times, passing knowledge from generation to generation and across geographic boundaries. What better image could there be to complement the library’s mission?

There is a deep connection to this building and its legacy of rich traditions. I’m told that the Word of Life mural (affectionately known to many as “Touchdown Jesus”), is one of the most-recognized symbols on campus. The Hesburgh Library was, in fact, designed by Fr. Hesburgh as one of a trilogy of iconic buildings that still define the Notre Dame skyline today.

Fr. Hesburgh’s original vision for the library as the academic heart of the University helped us anchor our goals firmly in support of teaching, learning and research across every academic discipline. When I was asked to develop a new vision for the Hesburgh Libraries, I only needed to look to the words of Fr. Ted, himself.

Fr. Hesburgh said, “I wanted in 1963, and still desire today, for the Library literally to stand for the future of Notre Dame as a place of unmatched intellectual achievement, free inquiry, and providential contributions to mankind. Let the library be a place on this campus where that hunger for truth will keep getting stronger, supporting freedom and justice around the world, inspiring excellence, and prodding us to bigger dreams.”

Transformation has been a theme throughout your career at Notre Dame — what has been one of the biggest areas of transformation for the Hesburgh Libraries?

From the beginning, I felt that we had a mandate to make transformational leaps across several areas, including our expertise, services, resources and spaces. Probably the most dramatic and visible transformations happened in library spaces, most notably the flagship Hesburgh Library.

Before I even arrived on campus I was asked by a student what I would do to transform the Hesburgh Library from a building that students found uninviting and intimidating. This type of feedback informed my focus on renewing the 50-year-old furnishings and interior of the building. My goal was to create a dynamic and welcoming environment that would support the way students and faculty work today.

Shortly after my arrival, we planned and executed an award-winning 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Hesburgh Library. This provided a timely forum to elevate Fr. Hesburgh’s original vision for the library as an enduring symbol of academic excellence at Notre Dame. With this foundation in place, we launched a multi-phased, multi-year renovation of the Hesburgh Library.

Thanks to the generosity of the Notre Dame family, many areas were revitalized and are now described as “amazing” and “spectacular” by our users and visitors. Our new spaces for study, research and collaboration have had a profound impact on the role of the library, fostering intellectual engagement and interdisciplinary discourse across campus.

This has also been an era of rapid transformation from physical formats to digital. While primary source physical materials will always be important, this past year has clearly demonstrated the need to make scholarly resources available in digital form. This shift prompted new infrastructure and foundations for digital preservation to continue to fulfill our library mission.

What about people? You expanded recruiting for new kinds of library expertise; how has that had an impact on teaching and research?

Even as the libraries’ mission of connecting people to knowledge persists in the digital age, the ways in which students and faculty leverage our services and expertise have changed dramatically. We saw new opportunities to expand campus partnerships in support of research and teaching, and we committed to developing the skills and expertise needed to meet this evolving demand.

Early on, I established two key imperatives for library staff and faculty — service excellence and enhancing capacity to meet evolving needs of scholarship. To this end, we fostered a flexible organizational structure that allowed us to adapt to the changing scholarly environment and pursue new opportunities holistically. At both the beginning and toward the end of my tenure, we underwent two major organizational redesign efforts, with many adjustments in between.

The creation of the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship is another key outcome of reimagining library expertise. Funded by Rudy and Jane Navari with the largest gift in the library's history, the Center brings expertise, services and resources together in a dedicated space to position the Hesburgh Libraries as an integral partner in using technology to “transform the pursuit of knowledge” at Notre Dame.

Throughout my time in the Hesburgh Libraries, we have concentrated on building our expertise, services and collections in tandem and fully embraced the developing digital era. In the end, I firmly believe that it is our people who are the most important source of inspiration and new ideas for transformative work. Leveraging our strengths and providing opportunities to help us grow as individuals is critical to our ability to advance as an organization.

What do you find still surprises people to learn about the Libraries?

I often say that, even in the digital age, the Hesburgh Libraries serves more stakeholders, perhaps, than any other group on campus. People are often surprised that we have nearly 200 staff, faculty and student workers who have expertise in a broad range of areas, including: subject expertise, user services, data management and metadata, IT, web and software development, copyright and intellectual property, licensing and access to digital resources, graphic design and much more. Our combined expertise continues to evolve to meet the diverse needs and rapidly changing demands across every academic discipline.

It is a fun fact that nearly 1.5 million people visit the flagship Hesburgh Library building annually. We also have over two million page views online each year. These numbers continue to climb, underscoring the valuable role the Hesburgh Libraries continue to play at Notre Dame.

Many of our library faculty are affiliates of research centers and institutes on campus. They also publish new research within their areas of expertise and the library profession as a whole. Many faculty teach credit-bearing courses, and we offer hundreds of course-integrated library instruction sessions, as well as stand-alone workshops, annually. In addition, we provide over one thousand research consultations for the campus community each year.

Lastly, people are often surprised at the vast ecosystem of resources the libraries provide to students and faculty, many of them now available 24/7. I can’t possibly list them all, but enhanced discovery and access as well as seamless service by each member of our team — service excellence, really — may be the reason our users are unaware of this behind-the-scenes complexity in their day-to-day experience.

What opportunities and challenges are on the horizon? What key issues do you think research libraries will face in the next five years?

In recent years, we have consistently heard from the University leadership that research is a critical area for Notre Dame. The whole academy is looking at research activity and funding as key indicators of strength for departments and centers. As part of the academy, we too should remain actively engaged in research in emerging areas in our own field of library and information science.

Our discipline is undergoing rapid transformations in areas such as preservation, knowledge organization, infrastructure support, user discovery behavior, and instructional design. We need to engage and pursue research in the trends and frontiers of our discipline and leverage our research to further advance the goals of our University.

The pace of change for research libraries continues to accelerate, so I imagine there will be many opportunities and challenges that we can’t even envision now. As we come out of COVID-19, research libraries are rethinking the nature and location of work for employees. That will evolve in tandem with whatever changes there may be in the nature and location of the work of our students and faculty.

Digitizing rare and unique materials is likely to be even more of a priority in light of our experience during the pandemic. Current publications are likely to continue the migration to digital, so library curation and preservation of electronic resources as well as the expansion of discovery and access will continue to grow in importance.

All of that said, I do believe that library space will remain important as a place that fosters and encourages intellectual engagement and collaborative work. Here at Notre Dame, I believe the Hesburgh Library will remain the intellectual heart of the academy and a symbol of academic excellence for future generations.

What still inspires you about librarianship and the role libraries play in the academic enterprise?

The people who work in libraries and those who rely on them are a powerful combination. As my husband was beginning his doctoral program, he was told that if he was going to be a successful scholar he should always get to know the librarian in his discipline because librarians always know the best resources to advance your research questions. Now, at the end of our careers, that advice still holds true.

I often refer to my team as “the magic behind the scenes.” They have truly inspired me each and every day, and their commitment to excellence has fueled a decade of library-wide transformation at Notre Dame.

The past 40 years have been an exciting time to be a librarian. I started my career typing catalog entries and filing those entries into physical card catalog cabinets. Now we use an online catalog, create digital exhibits, and map research projects with GIS software. I can’t imagine how much transformation the next 40 years will bring, but I am confident that the people who work in libraries will continue to be as imaginative and creative as the many colleagues with whom I’ve had the privilege to work.

Libraries will surely remain at the heart of the academic and research enterprise, and I look forward to seeing how they evolve to fulfill their mission of connecting people to knowledge. I specifically look forward to watching the continued transformation of the Hesburgh Libraries under the leadership of the incoming university librarian, K. Matthew Dames.