Penn State Libraries researchers focus on findings that benefit society

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Throughout most of the 20th century, aerial photography formed the building blocks of large-scale mapping activities across the country. Photos have historically been captured on large-format physical film that is now preserved in academic libraries, government archives and private collections nationwide. However, their inaccessibility often limits their usefulness, said Nathan Piekielek, head of the Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps and Geospatial Information at Penn State University Libraries and associate professor of geography.

“They are often undigitized, lack spatial reference — such as where they were captured and how they fit together — and even in digital form do not meet contemporary geospatial data standards,” Piekielek said.

Digitization of historic aerial photography has been ongoing for decades, but only recently have technological advances, including structure from motion photogrammetry and computer vision, increased the possibilities for using these archival documents both in research and for other purposes. In 2018, Piekielek began developing, testing and refining an efficient computer workflow to convert digitized archival aerial photography into geospatial data that is compatible with modern mapping and research tools. The results, he said, are not only “of comparable quality to modern datasets” but also applicable to many areas of research and public interest, such as climate change, urban expansion, golf course management, wetland and farmland preservation, cold-case crime investigation, family genealogy and others.

“This new workflow shows promise in increasing the accessibility of archival aerial photography,” he said. The workflow is being applied to historic imagery layers from Pennsylvania, and results will be posted to the Hamer Center’s ArcGIS Hub site as they become available.

Piekielek’s work is one example of research faculty conduct as part of the University Libraries, which recently announced 10 University-approved faculty librarian sabbaticals on a wide range of research topics for the 2025-26 academic year. They range from the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create open educational resources, to the history and effects of book bans, to ways to improve upon and more widely disseminate information literacy instruction.

“These projects highlight the broad scope of library and information science and demonstrate the social impact of research at the University Libraries,” said Nathan Hall, associate dean for distinctive collections and digital strategies, University Libraries. “Through either improved access to collections in ways that make it easier to identify new patterns in old data, or increased awareness of how embedded our lives are in the information landscape, library researchers have a consistent focus on developing findings that benefit society, the environment and our communities.”

Piekielek’s research was supported by the Sally W. Kalin Early Career Librarianship for Technological Innovations, a post he held from 2018 to 2021. The position is one of two endowed positions established in 2012 by Sally Kalin, a retired associate dean for the University Libraries, and her husband, Rich. The first positions of their kind at any U.S. research library, these librarianships allow the recipients to explore innovative approaches to services and collections and support new initiatives.

“I’ve always believed that it is important to invest in individuals who demonstrate the potential to be future leaders in their chosen fields,” Kalin said. “I have to say I’m very impressed with the research they’re doing: the depth, the creativity, the applications to students and faculty.

“When Rich and I set up the positions, we wanted to make sure they were impactful,” Kalin said. “It proves that when people have the resources, they can use them to make a difference.”

Penn State faculty librarians’ research is not only impactful, but also highly productive, as evidenced by a study published in the July 2023 issue of College & Research Libraries, the official scholarly research journal of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Penn State librarians’ research productivity was listed No. 2 among the 23 public academic research library tenure-eligible faculty cohorts studied between 2013 and 2017, including seven peer institutions now in the Big Ten Academic Alliance.

In the same study, four prior periods’ comparisons leading back to 1993-97 listed Penn State librarians’ research productivity no lower than No. 4 and as high as No. 1 among equivalent institutional pools. The study authors noted that the journals they reviewed in the paper were all “well-recognized, refereed [library and information science] journals” encompassing 52 journal titles for the 2013-17 dataset. The next study’s results are expected to be published in 2025.

Tanya Seyfert, a 1987 Penn State graduate and longtime supporter of the University Libraries, said that Penn State librarians do work that is both innovative and impactful, often in ways that people don’t realize.

“Librarians are so much more than the picture I had in my mind when I was a student coming to the library,” said Seyfert, a managing director at Cushman & Wakefield, a global commercial real estate services provider, and a member of the Libraries Development Board. “The breadth of what they work on is really kind of inspiring, as well as surprising. They are involved in things you just wouldn’t expect a librarian to be engaged in.”

According to Piekielek, and as demonstrated by his own research, Penn State librarians are driven by a passion for issues that not only affect their own profession but have implications for the world at large. Another example is the ongoing research of Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm, research and instruction librarians at Penn State Berks. Their work, which was awarded the 2021 Innovation Award from the ACRL Instruction Section, focuses on privacy literacy, an emerging area of information literacy that addresses social issues that have come to the forefront due to rapidly evolving technology.

“Privacy literacy comprises knowledge, skills and dispositions regarding personal information and its place in the information ecosystem,” Hartman-Caverly said.

Chisholm agreed.

“Privacy is respect for persons, not just protection of data,” Chisholm said. She explained that a well-founded philosophy of privacy literacy encompasses the role of privacy across the human experience, including individual identity, intellectual freedom and property, contextual and bodily integrity, intimate relationships, freedom of association and solitude.

Although privacy has long been a central part of professional ethics in libraries, the researchers said, it has gained prominence in recent years due to concerns about the complex information ecosystem and culture of surveillance capitalism. These common concerns have implications for many issues, from health and compliance monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic to the emergence of generative AI. The impact of data collection, profiling and surveillance also aligns privacy efforts with diversity, equity, inclusion, access and belonging initiatives.

Documenting these practices in academic libraries was the focus of Hartman-Caverly and Chisholm’s book, Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries, published in October 2023 by ACRL. Their upcoming privacy workshop series, open to the public, will explore topics in artificial intelligence, intimate privacy, and privacy and social justice.

“As privacy literacy gains traction in library programming, there is a need for comprehensive consensus standards to guide the creation and assessment of privacy literacy curricula across the K-20 educational spectrum,” Hartman-Caverly said.

With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Chisholm and Hartman-Caverly, along with Priya Kumar in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, will host a national forum at Penn State in March convening scholars and practitioners for the purpose of answering this call.

“Often, these types of literacies, such as privacy literacy or media literacy or financial literacy, which are essentially skills that will help all our students succeed, are not the focus of any one discipline,” said Jennie Knies, associate dean for Commonwealth Campus Libraries, University Libraries. “Librarians can often see the bigger picture and identify crucial gaps in curriculum across the University. This type of research is crucial to better understanding the complicated information landscape.”

Kalin echoed the sentiment.

“Research can be a challenge for librarians because we don’t study research in the same way a doctoral candidate might,” Kalin said. “But Penn State librarians are showing the potential to do quality research that is publishable and can even be replicated. They have a model for other librarians nationwide.”

To learn more about Penn State faculty librarians’ research, visit the Libraries’ “Researcher Publications” website and the Researcher Metadata Database.