2024-2025 Impact Report_final version

Laura Turner

FUN FACT: My favorite bedtime reading material includes crime noir translated into English. I love getting a deeper sense of the regional culture and idiosyncrasies that an international crime novelist brings to their writing. Some recent authors I’ve enjoyed include works by Karin Fossum (Norway), Natsuo Kirino (Japan), Camilla Läckberg (Sweden), Ragnar Jónasson (Iceland), Andrea Camilleri (Italian), and Deon Meyer (South Africa). This bedtime routine sometimes keeps me up too late!

I am the Associate Dean, Head of Collections, Access, and Discovery, and subject liaison to the Music Department. My main work involves managing the library’s materials budget and overseeing all activities of our access services and technical services units. These units provide circulation, interlibrary loan, collection management, print and electronic resources acquisitions and cataloging, database maintenance, and preservation services to the university community. I started at Copley Library in October 2012 after working for several years as Head of Technical Services at Washington and Lee University’s main library in Lexington, Virginia. I earned my Master in Library and Information Science with an endorsement in Technical Services from the University of Texas at Austin. As head of Copley Library’s largest department, I spend significant time managing library projects. These projects vary in size but typically focus on providing better access to resources and spaces or enhancing services to our library users. Major projects for me at Copley Library included extensive planning for the 2019-2020 library renovation, especially in my department; collaboration on a redesign of the library website; and our recent implementation of a new library catalog system. But small projects form a regular part of my job and are usually in collaboration with other folks in my department, including our student workers, who are essential to successful library operations. My experiences in library project management with the renovation inspired my recent research and scholarship, including writing a book chapter and co-presenting on different aspects of managing library projects. My research interests also include evaluating user discovery of and access to library resources, whether print or online. For my next research project, I am collaborating with Charissa Noble, USD Assistant Professor of Musicology. Dr. Noble and I secured funding to help the library acquire a near-complete print run of New Music: A Quarterly of Modern Compositions . Henry Cowell created and published it from 1927-1958 through the New Music Society. The journal offers scores of modern compositions from that time period rather than articles. Because the journal is not available online, I am working with Theodore Presser Company, the current copyright owner, to identify solutions for providing online access. I will also help Dr. Noble plan a 100th-anniversary celebration of New Music and highlight our work with the journal title in a future article. Through my role as the subject liaison to the Music Department, I also provide library instruction to music classes and acquire other materials requested for their curricular and scholarly needs. I love showing students how to begin research in the library, and I often take physical items, like Rolling Stone magazine and Journal of Music Theory , to show the differences and value of using both entertainment and scholarly publications in research.

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