Annual Report, 2024-25

Annual Report to the Provost

July 1, 2024 — June 30, 2025

View this report as a PDF

Section I: Unit Activities that Align with Wolfpack 2030 Strategic Plan Goals

Goal 1: Empower students for a lifetime of success and impact.

• Awarded $138,696 in Student Scholarships to 22 students, a 100% increase from the previous year.
• The Alt-Textbook Project supported 19 NC State faculty members to redesign their courses, removing the cost of required materials and saving an estimated $968,000 annually for 11,550 students.
• The NC State Gaming and Esports Lab at the Hunt Library had over 23,500 users in its first full academic year of operation and hosted internationally recognized events reaching over 50 million viewers through collaborations with major brands.
• Opened a Maker Studio at the Hunt Library, complementing the Makerspace at the Hill Library and adding some immediate experiential learning opportunities for Centennial Campus users.
• Supported the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with consultation, training and online resources, and through funded research such as a $100,000 Google Academic Research Award for “A Curriculum on Responsible AI and Information Policy for Educators.”
• Secured the Libraries' largest-ever corporate grant of $500,000 in support of a proposed new Experiential Learning Center at the Hunt Library

Goal 2: Ensure preeminence in research, scholarship, innovation and collaboration.

• Added four new Open Access (OA) publisher agreements in FY25, for a total of 16 OA agreements, which have saved NC State authors over $3,000,000 in article processing charges since 2022.
• The Research Facilitation Service (RFS) saw a 52% increase in requests this year, supporting the computational and data needs of 11 colleges and several core facilities and centers.
• Completed the first year of the Data Science Consulting Program, a partnership with the Data Science and AI Academy. Librarians mentored nine graduate students who provided over 1,000 expert consultations for students, faculty and staff.
• Increased the disciplinary breadth of use of the Libraries' visualization spaces in teaching, learning and research, reaching broad audiences with unique experiences such as the interdisciplinary NSF-funded project, Scale Worlds.
• Hosted the Envisioning Research Contest on the Libraries' large video walls, in collaboration with the Graduate School, the Office of Research and Innovation, the Office of Undergraduate Research and University Communications
• Implemented AI-supported features in the Libraries' website to improve the relevance of searches and research effectiveness
• Continued to provide and promote the Citation Index, a bibliometric tool that documents and visualizes the work of NC State researchers.

Goal 3: Expand and advance our engagement with and service to North Carolina and beyond, defining the standard for a 21st-century land-grant university.

• Partnered with the College of Sciences to host the fourth State of the Sciences at the Hunt Library, a public outreach event for all ages, highlighting the ways that science plays an important role in everyday lives.
• Hosted the second Envisioning Urban Futures symposium at the Hunt Library in partnership with the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs and the Peter A. Pappas Real Estate Development Program.

Goal 4: Champion a culture of equality, belonging and well-being in all we do.

• Celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Libraries Fellows Program with an event at the Hunt Library. This nationally recognized program for early-career librarians has over 90 alumni serving in a variety of roles in libraries and institutions
• Provided wellness programs for students at the two main libraries and the Veterinary Medicine Library. Attendance approached 7,300.
• Partnered with the Office of Global Engagement on the Global Film Series, which has been attended by more than 4,000 people since it began in 2018.

Goal 5: Improve university effectiveness through transformative technologies, cutting-edge processes and actionable data

• Began the migration of all servers and storage from the data center at the Hunt Library to OIT-managed infrastructure, which will save money and staff time.
• Conducted user research in partnership with the College of Design to inform a reenvisioning of the Harrye B. Lyons Design Library in Brooks Hall.

Goal 6: Lead in developing innovative partnerships, entrepreneurial thinking and applied problem-solving.

• The Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) Executive Committee decided to streamline and refocus the consortium for the current digital-first environment. TRLN will continue to support resource sharing/delivery and other forms of collaboration.
• Expanded the partnerships of the RFS both within and outside the university, enhancing research computing, infrastructure and data capabilities.

Goal 7: Elevate the national and global reputation and visibility of NC State.

• Hosted the 2024 Designing Libraries XI conference focused on innovative design of contemporary libraries. This was the Libraries’ fourth time hosting this international event since helping to found it in 2012
• Featured 11 best-selling authors in events with attendance of over 3,000. Author Rebecca Yarros attracted attendees from the region and around the country.
   

Section II: Topics Relevant to the Unit

Program updates or changes

Include scope of activities, volume of activities, special achievements, or significant and special program reviews, studies or plans

• Assumed management responsibility for the Duke Energy Hall from Student Centers, with the College of Engineering as a key partner. Between July 1 and April 30, 2025, the venue hosted 180 events, generating $48,622 in revenue.

Initiatives

Major initiatives and/or changes to programs or activities

• Data science: expanded and formalized the Data Science Consulting Program in partnership with the Data Science and AI Academy. University demand for data science support is strong and continues to grow.
• NC State Esports Program: worked to build the program’s capacity through the pilot NC State Gaming and Esports Lab at the Hunt Library.

Staff

Major new appointments, kudos, professional activities and recognition

• Claire Leverett appointed as NC LIVE Executive Director
• Jeff Essic, Outstanding Service to the North Carolina GIS Community Award
• Cas Saroza, UNC-Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science Rising Star Alumni Award
• Thomas Jones, 2025 Provost's Unit Award for Excellence

Challenges

Recommendations and concerns for the future

• Funding the NC State Esports Program: The NC State Gaming and Esports Lab's personnel and operational costs are currently funded only through FY26, and permanent funding is needed to continue this program.
• Managing the Research Collections in a Changing Environment: The Libraries will reexamine and likely restructure our investments in the research collections to meet university needs in a changing environment, considering factors such as ongoing inflation and anticipated reductions in research expenditures and funding.

Opportunities

Advancement for growth in the future

• NC State Esports Program: With appropriate resources, the Libraries has the potential to provide strategic leadership for this program as the Mann Hall arena opens in 2027
• The proposed Experiential Learning Center (ELC) at the Hunt Library would provide a critical mass of student resources on Centennial Campus, including a greatly enlarged Makerspace, Active Learning Labs and spaces dedicated to data, media, visualization and collaboration.
   

Volume of Activities

(24/25, 23/24, 19/20, 14/15)

Services

Collection Use, Expenditures, and ARL Rankings

Library Spaces

Collection Statistics

*The Libraries closed on March 16, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. User visits include all Libraries locations and the College of Education Media and Education Technology Resource Center (METRC). METRC was relocated from Poe Hall to the Hill Library in November 2023 and has reduced its seating capacity by ~100 seats.
2. Instruction and outreach includes 622 instruction sessions in faculty classrooms; 276 instruction sessions in colleges, departments, centers, and other units on campus; 166 Libraries workshops; 128 Libraries outreach programs; 189 Wellness programs; 21 orientation tours; and 122 METRC sessions.
3. Includes print circulation, reserve materials (both print and electronic), and textbooks.
4. Decrease in e-book usage due to major publishers transitioning from accounting for usage at the book section level to reporting at the book title level.
5. Includes library-related expenditures made by colleges and units outside of OUC 25. Excludes benefits.
6. Currently ARL's membership includes 118 North American academic libraries.
7. Public seating counts do not include auditoriums, faculty and graduate student study rooms and commons, teaching labs, or high-tech spaces. Card-swipe spaces include faculty and graduate student study rooms and commons, and teaching labs.
8. Makerspace usage is based on door entrances and laser cutting requests (performed in-house).
9. Decrease in FY 2023-24 due to introducing a new card swipe entrance system, which did not count patrons who were stopping by to “take a look”.
10. Usage totals represent the number of times digital media applications are used on the Libraries public computing stations.
11. The NC State Gaming & Esports Lab opened on January 16, 2024.
12. High-tech spaces include the Hill Library Cyma Rubin Visualization Gallery and the Hunt Library Teaching & Visualization Lab. Spaces are used for courses, demonstrations, workshops, seminars, research (including thesis presentations), and events. Note that the Hill Library Visualization Studio was closed during 2020 for the renovation that included the new Cyma Rubin Visualization Gallery.
13. The iPearl Innovation Studio opened on February 8, 2021
14. Represents 68 events involving 24 collaborations with: 18 campus units/centers, two colleges, two academic programs, and two external organizations.
15. The historic volume count has been changed to reflect the titles available in the Libraries’ collection.
16. Electronic subscriptions = 119,081; Print subscriptions = 409.
17. Includes e-books, e-journals, and e-databases; includes NC LIVE resources.
18. Includes the Special Collections Research Center's rare and unique materials, scholarly publications in the Institutional Repository, the Design Library Image Collection, and the Inside Wood Collection. FY 2023-24 count updated due to improved methodology for capturing collection counts.
19. FY 2023/24 usage was higher than the trend over the past five years due to very high journal full-text views of the Data-Axle reference product. The user switched over to accessing the data in a more effective way in FY 2024/25.