ATG Interviews Donald Beagle

Abstract

Hey Don! You have come a long way since you were Head of the Main Library at Charleston County Library. Please tell us about yourself. What have you been doing? DB: I joined the faculty of Belmont Abbey College (Belmont, N.C.) in 2000 as Director of Library Services. Previously, I had served as Head of the Information Commons and as Associate University Librarian at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Before that, I had spent fifteen years in public library management positions, most recently as Regional Branch Head and then Head of Main Library with the Charleston County Public Library in Charleston, South Carolina. ATG: You have had a long and distinguished career. Where did you do your graduate work? And didn't you win an award or two if my memory serves me right? DB: I did graduate work at the University of Michigan where I won the Hopwood Writing Award (1977). A few years later I was also the first recipient of NCLA's Doralyn J. Hickey Award for my first article about library technology. ("Decision Points in Small-Scale Automation." North Carolina Libraries, 44(3) Fall 1986. 159-169). ATG: And of course your articles include "Conceptualizing an Information Commons" (Journal of Academic Librarianship. 25(2) March 1999. 82-89.) which Paul Conway, formerly with Duke University and now with the University of Michigan, has called "...the seminal article that defined the core requirements of an Information Commons." Much of your writing has come from your role as head of the IC at UNC-Charlotte. Why did you move from a large university like UNCC to small Belmont Abbey College? And why should collection development, acquisitions and serials librarians be interested? DB: Well, in the digital era, for me at least, some of the cache has drained out of the large library mystique. Through FTE-based sliding scales and consortium licensing, small libraries can loom a good deal "larger" in the digital domain than they ever could in the realm of print collections. This 1950's era building I work in was sort of an ugly duckling to visiting colleagues, but I saw it differently. I realized that it could become a better environment for enabling student use of technology than for shelving a large print collection. Since we see a trend toward offsite storage, compact shelving, downsized in-house collections and so forth, I felt that this type of building had unrealized potential. I might add, when the Chronicle of Higher Education sent a reporter and an architect around the state to review historic