Volume 6, Issue 2, Fall 2005

A Great Library For The Future

A century ago, the University’s leaders believed that building a world-class library was essential to recruiting and retaining excellent faculty. Their vision proved prescient. Today, the richness of the collections and the excellence of the faculty remain critically important to the success of the University.

This campus will continue to have an advantage over peer institutions only if its Library continues to meet the growing demands and expectations of its users. Academic libraries currently face many challenges, including diminished budgets, skyrocketing costs, increased demand for materials, and the preservation of endangered items. Furthermore, the electronic age has significantly altered the way libraries operate. As our Library adapts to meet these new challenges, its core mission remains the same: to collect, preserve, and provide resources that enable discovery and the use of knowledge in all formats and across all disciplines.

To better meet the needs of its users and streamline services, the Library plans to reallocate specific resources through the end of FY06:

• Consolidate the History and Philosophy Library and the Newspaper Library to form a new locus or historical research.
• Relocate the collections of the Women and Gender Resources Library and reassign its head librarian to a location where faculty and students congregate and work.
• As appropriate, cancel print subscriptions in favor of electronic access.
• Recentralize technical services operations and reduce duplicative processes.
• Consolidate digital library activities that currently are distributed among various library units.

The following plans also are underway to make the most of new technologies and incorporate current trends in teaching and learning:

• Create new, collaborative services to support the research needs of faculty and students. Develop more integrated classroom support services.
• Aggressively add electronic versions of reference books and other useful texts, such as computer manuals.
• Implement new tools that will allow users to search more than one database simultaneously and connect them to the most appropriate version of the electronic resource they seek.
• Cancel print abstracting and indexing titles, replace them with electronic versions, and monitor these efforts to assure best value.
• Work with CITES to build an institutional repository that captures and sustains the digital materials created on campus.

Ten years from now, the Library will be known not only for its rich print collections but also for its vast holdings of electronic materials and its ongoing excellent services. It will be a leader in developing tools that provide easy access to online resources, giving the campus a competitive advantage over its peer institutions. It also will continue to serve as a destination in which to work, to interact with colleagues and experts, and to think, contemplate, and dream.