Top 10 Library Stories from 2025
Each year, we take time to reflect on some of the most important projects we’ve pursued at the San Diego State University Library as well as some of the most significant contributions we’ve made both to the strategic goals of the university and to the day-to-day concerns of our community.
Looking back at another full year of our work on the library strategic plan and our contributions to the SDSU strategic plan, we are happy to share this review of a busy 2025.
To keep up to date on everything happening in (and around) the University Library, please visit the Library News all year round!
Bonus: Library Employment and Student Success
The California State University is committed to providing experiences that strengthen our graduates’ opportunities to pursue further education and/or to move successfully into their first professional position. The University Library contributes to both goals through student employment opportunities that lead our library student employees to graduate school and, often, to careers in libraries, archives, and museums.
In our Impact Report for 2024-25, we highlighted two alumni who used their experience as library student employees to find their passion and prepare for their careers. Sierra Barahura (*21), now a children’s librarian at National City (CA) Public Library, wrote that she was inspired by the fact that librarians serve their communities. As she concluded: “The more we learn, the more we can bring knowledge to our communities and make them a better place.” The University Library is one of the largest student employers on campus and our faculty and staff are committed to providing students with the skills they need to be successful in the classroom and in their careers.
Now, on to other library stories!
#10 - Library Donors Make a Lasting Impact on Special Collections
George (’55) and Judy (’58) Sunga left a significant bequest to the University Library allowing us to create a new endowment supporting Special Collections and University Archives. Already holding the George A. Sunga Television Collection, this new endowment will provide critical support for processing, preserving, and providing access to distinctive collections that, according to SCUA Head Anna Culbertson, “document the region’s rich history of popular culture, media and entertainment.”
#9 - CSU Libraries Conference Offers System-Wide Professional Development Opportunity
SDSU library staff and faculty contributed to the inaugural CSU Libraries Conference, a state-wide professional development opportunity that took place at multiple campuses and online. Speaking to more than 600 participants, then-Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs Nathan Evans praised the CSU Libraries as “central to student success” and called the conference a “starting point for a new chapter of collaboration, idea-sharing and collective impact.” SDSU library staff and faculty presented sessions on research services, sustainability, community engagement, and digital humanities, all critical to the library’s contribution to the SDSU strategic plan. Following a successful pilot in 2025, the CSU Libraries Conference will return in 2026!
#8 - Collaboration in Comics Studies Continues with “Library Treasures”
The San Diego State University Library continued its ground-breaking partnership with the College of Arts and Letters to support the inaugural Comics Scholar-in-Residence and Comics Artist-in-Residence as a leader in the Center for Comics Studies. Laurence Grove (University of Glasgow) and Frank Quitely (Eisner Award and Harvey Award winner for comics including We3 and All-Star Superman) designed and taught a section of HIST 157 (Comics and History) built around “ten treasures” of the SDSU Library’s Comic and Graphic Arts Collection. An extraordinary example of the ways in which library collections and expertise can drive innovation in teaching, learning, and scholarship, this course provided Grove and Quitely with opportunities to extend the reach of the SDSU program through engagement with other courses, as well as with community partners such as Little Fish Comic Book Studio and the Comic-Con Museum.
#7 - Patrick Flanigan Wins Presidential Staff Excellence Award
Since coming to the Digital Humanities Center, Patrick Flanigan has helped to expand access to podcasting in the University Library and broaden engagement with digital humanities spaces and services. Over the past decade, podcasting has emerged as a popular approach to public humanities scholarship and practice, and SDSU faculty have leveraged student interest in podcasting by assigning students to create their own podcasts as an alternative to traditional research assignments. Flanigan has been essential to our ability to meet the demand for this innovative product of student research, with reservations for podcasting studios growing by almost 300% over the past two years. In her nomination letter, Professor Jessica Pressman (English and Comparative Literature) wrote that, with Flanigan’s support, she felt “excited about teaching new classes and offering old classes in new ways.” In collaboration with Digital Humanities Librarian Pamella Lach, Flanigan has made the Digital Humanities Center a hub for community and innovation both at SDSU and across the California State University.
#6 - Pamela Jackson Wins Library Journal’s “Mover and Shaker” Award
For more than 20 years, Library Journal has identified “creative, inspiring, visionary, and committed” librarians who are helping to improve their workplace and “advancing the library field.” With awards offered in categories including “advocates,” “community builders,” and “educators,” we were excited to see SDSU Comic Arts Librarian Pamela Jackson honored as a “change agent” for her work with faculty, K-12 educators, and community partners through the Center for Comics Studies. The first SDSU librarian to win this award, Jackson was nominated for her work with on the “Using Comics to Teach Social Justice” program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
#5 - Library and Bookstore Collaborate to Promote Educational Affordability
A commitment to “sustainable affordability” is essential to CSU Forward, the new strategic plan for the California State University, and, in 2025, the University Library continued to demonstrate the impact of its collaboration with the Bookstore to make college more affordable through a shared commitment to the use of educational materials delivered to our students at low-cost (or no-cost) as well as the use of open educational resources. Continuing campus collaborations first put into place as part of the CSU’s Affordable Learning Solutions initiative, our work with faculty and the Bookstore through programs like Day1Ready has helped to drive down the costs of educational materials for students and to ensure that all SDSU students have access to the materials they need to be successful in their classes. As part of a broader commitment to open access publishing and the delivery of digital content that is always available to our students when and where they need it, our campus-wide collaboration around affordable educational materials has saved students over $1,000,000 in textbook costs (and counting).
#4 - Library Collaborates with Student Advocates to Restore Late-Night Hours
For more than a decade, the University Library provided 24-hour access to SDSU community members through its “24/7 Study Area,” a tradition of service threatened in 2025 by broader challenges across the budgets for the library, campus, and CSU system. Working with Associated Students, students from across the university shared with us the importance of 24-hour access to the library, especially as this reflected our shared commitments to student success, academic community, and equitable access to the resources and spaces needed by the members of our diverse student body. Working with campus leadership, we found a way to respond to student requests to restore 24-hour access to the library for the remainder of the academic year.
#3 - A Library for “A New Kind of HSI”
The SDSU strategic plan identifies our goal to be recognized as a “a new kind of HSI (Hispanic-Serving Institution).” In 2025, the University Library continued to explore what distinctive contributions may be made by a library and its faculty and staff to the work of a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Building on earlier collaboration around digital collections with libraries and archives in Mexico, Latin American Languages and Cultures Librarian Maria Amor, Imperial Valley Librarian Mara Cota, and Sciences and Sustainability Librarian Sarah Tribelhorn collaborated with colleagues in Mexico to revive the Transborder Library Forum and to bring a library perspective to the Re:Border Conference. Partnerships such as these are only one way that the University Library contributes to SDSU’s character as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, with others found in the building of distinctive collections and collaboration with campus partners such as the Latinx Resource Center.
#2 - SDSU Achieves Certification from the Sustainable Libraries Initiative
San Diego State University was recently named to the 2026 edition of The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges, a designation earned by “its commitment to environmental sustainability and demonstration of campus stewardship.” The University Library helped to demonstrate the campus commitment to sustainability through its certification this year by the Sustainable Libraries Initiative. As the first academic library in California to be certified by the Initiative (followed soon after by Cal Poly Humboldt), SDSU achieved certification by demonstrating the place of sustainability in the library strategic plan, campus and community partnerships around sustainability, community science, and climate resilience education, and also by showing the leadership role the library plays on university-wide initiatives such as the President’s Sustainability Advisory Committee. With leadership from Sciences and Sustainability Librarian Sarah Tribelhorn and other members of the Library’s “Green Team,” we plan to continue our work in 2026 to establish the University Library as a campus hub for information about sustainability at San Diego State and throughout Greater San Diego.
#1 - SDSU in Now R1
One of the most ambitious goals of the SDSU strategic plan was to establish our place as a “premier research university” and see that work recognized by the American Council on Education’s Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, a goal achieved in 2025 when SDSU joined the ranks of “Research 1” (R1) institutions, reflecting our leadership in research activity and doctoral degree production. Just as the University Library has highlighted and increased its focus on the distinctive contributions it makes to university goals such as sustainability, international engagement, and service to our diverse community, we have given the same attention to our commitment and contribution to the university’s growing research enterprise and academic programs.
Thank you for being part of the SDSU Library community in 2025! If you would like to know more about any of the stories above, please contact your liaison librarian. We look forward to working with you to write new stories in 2026!