Daniel Dollar’s career has covered a wide range of information management and retrieval. After studying politics, he worked with the Congressional Research Service, which fired his enthusiasm for libraries. After a Master’s in Library Science, Daniel started at Yale working in the medical library; he went on to become Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and is currently serving as the Interim Law Librarian. In an interview for the ATG Podcast, Daniel talked about his career and present role. Key themes that emerged include:
- Libraries are instruction partners, not just content providers.
Their value lies in helping people search effectively, evaluate information, construct research questions, and use emerging tools responsibly.
- Medical and law libraries share common ground.
Both support high-stakes research, professional education, and users who benefit from embedded expert guidance.
- Digital licensing creates new challenges.
Moving from owned print materials to licensed electronic content can restrict lending, preservation, and long-term access.
- Collaboration is essential.
Shared collections, resource-sharing networks, and collective licensing help libraries provide broader and more resilient access.
- Knowledge equity requires more than access.
Research4Life is evolving from simply delivering scholarly content to helping researchers in lower-income countries publish, edit, preserve, and contribute knowledge.
- AI makes human expertise more important.
Libraries can help institutions evaluate AI tools, understand their limitations, address hallucinations and bias, and develop ethical practices.
- The future library is a network and a convener.
Its role is to connect people with resources, teach them how to use information, and bring communities together to address major challenges.
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