January 2023-December 2025 Strategic Goals

Library entrance exterior - looking skyward
  1. Enhance our understanding of the needs and interests of our community, especially populations currently not well served
    • Build capacity for gathering community input
    • Implement ways of gathering student input, especially from underserved populations on campus, including Black students, students of color, and Indigenous students, in ways that respect student time
    • Identify necessary adjustments to library services, resources, and events and begin implementing those changes
  2. Create a plan for updating library spaces to respond to user needs and interests
    • Identify spaces in the library that need repurposing
    • Prepare for the transition of the Library Annex, including a new Archives space
    • Study and address physical accessibility issues in the buildings and digital accessibility issues on the website
    • Explore feasibility of changing spaces to reflect changing student needs
    • Identify and prioritize spaces needing a facilities refresh such as carpeting, wood paneling, and furnishings
  3. Improve clarity about how and why to use the library
    • Help library users navigate the physical collections and physical spaces
    • Help library users develop information literacy skills, including navigating the information landscape and utilizing digital and physical collections
    • Provide outreach to faculty, staff, and students about library services and expertise
    • Create, better organize, and advertise “how to use the library” resources
  4. Create a sustainable collection management plan for physical and digital collections
    • Set desired target age for physical and ebook collections and set desired footprint for physical collections
    • Establish regular inventory, review, and deselection timeline for library collections
    • Identify key personnel required for ongoing collection management projects and deselection and equitably integrate those tasks into their position descriptions
    • Implement workflows to incorporate more graduate student research and writing into our institutional repository
    • Create an Archives and Special Collections collection development and management policy
  5. Support library staff in creating an empowering and inclusive work environment
    • Improve internal communication
    • Build cohesion with new staff members, between library teams, and across flexible work arrangements
    • Review and revise recruitment and onboarding processes with the goal of making them more equitable and inclusive
    • Support flexible work arrangements, including establishing workplace norms for teamwork, collaboration, and technology deployment
    • Work to ensure appropriate workloads for library staff that support a healthy work/life balance