From the Dean of University Libraries
At the heart of every great university—humming with the energy of discovery and the steady pulse of academic rigor and innovation—is its library.
As the Dean of University Libraries, I have the privilege of witnessing the ways in which the Libraries’ transform lives across campus and within our community. We are so much more than a repository for books. We are the intellectual hubs of the Cardinal community. We are where a first-generation student finds the mentorship to navigate their first research paper, where faculty members collaborate across disciplines to solve modern challenges and forge new ways of thinking, and where our history is preserved through world-class archives.
A Crossroads of Innovation and Tradition
The landscape of information is changing at a breathtaking pace. To ensure our students remain competitive in a global workforce, the University Libraries must continually evolve. Our vision for this campaign is not just about updating spaces; it is about empowering the next generation of digital citizens.
We are asking you to partner with us as we invest in:
- Transformative Learning Environments: Creating flexible, technology-rich spaces that mirror the collaborative nature of the modern workplace.
- Digital Scholarship, Scholarly Communication and Access: Enhancing our digital collections and creating pathways to Open Access ensure that financial barriers never stand in the way of a student’s ability to learn and create or a faculty member’s ability to craft and communicate knowledge in new and novel ways.
- Preserving our Cultural Heritage: Preserving the unique legacies of Ball State, Muncie, Delaware County and East-Central Indiana while digitizing rare collections for researchers across the globe.
Why Your Support Matters
Every breakthrough begins with a question, and every question requires the right resources to find an answer. When you support the University Libraries, your gift doesn't just impact one department or one major—it touches every single student on our campus.
Your generosity provides the tools, the technology, and the expert guidance that turn "what if" into "what’s next."
Join Us in Writing the Next Chapter
I invite you to be a part of this journey. Your investment ensures that the Ball State University Libraries remain a vibrant, inclusive, and cutting-edge resource for all Cardinals.
Together, we can ensure our students don't just keep pace with the world—they lead it.
With gratitude,
Nancy H. Abashian, Dean of University Libraries
Your gift can support opportunities such as:
1. Creating Transformative Learning Environments
Today’s students don't just consume information; they create it. Creating transformative learning environments allows the Libraries to move beyond silent stacks to provide a "collision space" for experimentation and innovation. It is designed to be the most high-traffic, high-impact square footage on campus.
- Moving student from Passive to Active: In the traditional library model, students were passive users —sitting in fixed rows of carrels, often isolated and confined by the furniture itself. We are seeking to create a "kinetic” space. Modern learning is fluid. A student might start their morning reading solo, then meet three classmates for a breakout session, and end the day rehearsing a pitch.
- Opportunity: Incorporating "agile furniture"—desks on casters, tiered stadium seating for impromptu talks, and writable glass walls. When the environment is adaptable, students stay longer, engage deeper, and move from merely "absorbing" facts to actively "wrestling" with ideas.
- Moving student from Siloed to Integrated: Historically, the academic journey was fragmented. A student would find a book in the library, walk across campus to the Writing Center for help with a draft, and then visit a tech lab in another building to format their data. This "siloed" approach creates friction and lost opportunities.
- Opportunity: By creating spaces for collaboration and co-location between the Libraries and our student success partners across campus, we remove the friction from the student learning experience and meet students at their point of need. This integration mirrors the cross-functional teams students will encounter in the professional world, teaching them to seek holistic solutions rather than isolated answers.
2. Digital Scholarship, Scholarly Communication and Access
To truly prepare Ball State students for the future of academia and the global workforce, we must expand and evolve. As such we must empower our community to be active participants in the global exchange of knowledge. This exchange shifts the library from a "finish line" (where books are stored) to a "launchpad" (where new knowledge is built and shared).
- Moving Student from Consumer to Creator: For decades, the library was where you went to consume the work of others (books, journals, microfiche). In the digital age, in partnership with the Libraries, every student is a potential publisher, producer, and programmer.
- Opportunity: Specialized labs and makerspaces give students the tools to build professional portfolios. Students will have tools necessary to use library datasets to build interactive maps, code new apps, or produce documentary films. They transition from being "users of the web" to "architects of the digital world.” This shift ensures that a Ball State degree represents not just what a student knows, but what they are capable of producing.
- Opportunity: We seek to enhance and expand our institutional repository, making every thesis, dissertation, and faculty publication from Ball State freely available to the world.
- Opportunity: Specialized labs and makerspaces give students the tools to build professional portfolios. Students will have tools necessary to use library datasets to build interactive maps, code new apps, or produce documentary films. They transition from being "users of the web" to "architects of the digital world.” This shift ensures that a Ball State degree represents not just what a student knows, but what they are capable of producing.
3. Preserving our Cultural Heritage
Preserving our cultural heritage is about more than just maintaining a historical record; it is about ensuring that the unique spirit, innovations, and stories of Ball State University, the Muncie, Delaware County and East-Central Indiana communities remain accessible, relevant, and "alive" for future generations.
- Moving from Fragile Paper to Forever Digital: Our archives house priceless collections—from the Middletown Studies (the most famous sociological study of an American city) to the architectural drawings housed in the Seager Archives to the Ball Brothers Archive. However, physical artifacts are subject to the toll of time.
- Opportunity: We are engaged in a massive effort to digitize these high-value collections. This moves the legacy out of a locked vault and onto the screens of researchers in London, Tokyo, and right here in Muncie. It ensures that even if a physical blueprint fades, the genius of the design is preserved in high-definition for eternity. This allows for the unification of archival collections in one state-of-the art location equipped with the necessary specialized equipment and labor required to process and digitize rare, oversized, and fragile materials.
