Hi everyone,

The Strategic Planning Steering committee is pleased to announce the release of the Draft 2 of the Libraries 2014-2019 Strategic Plan. The Steering Committee developed this after reviewing notes from the discussions at the March 24 planning retreat, the over 180 comments left on the CommentPress site, and a handful of emails. A version of this draft was shared with the Dean, and we made minor changes based on her feedback.

UL Strategic Plan 2014-19, Version 2

We ask that you read and comment on this plan by end of day on Friday May 2nd. The Steering Committee will meet to review your feedback on Monday the 5th. We have decided that it’s too busy right now to schedule another public forum, given that the semester’s end is on the horizon and the number of other events already scheduled.

To everyone who participated and left notes for us: a huge, huge, thanks. There was very useful and thoughtful advice, and also many more ideas than we could possibly fit into the plan. We did our best to incorporate your perspectives and identify those activities which would most affect how we serve our users.

We think you’ll see that this plan is very outwardly focused, but it will only be carried out through activities we initiate in and among the Libraries. Once this document is done, the work will be just beginning, and many of the suggestions you have made will be useful to consider again during the implementation.

New Leadership for the Planning Process

From this point forward, the strategic planning process will be overseen by two new co-chairs of the Strategic Planning steering committee: Chris Avery and Nonny Schlotzhauer. Kimlyn Patishnock has also joined the committee as a representative from the Dean’s office, and she will work with Chris and Nonny to complete the plan.

A 3rd draft will be ready by mid-to-late May. That will likely be the final version before it goes to the Dean for her to review and prepare for submission to the Provost.

Thanks

I want to thank the members of the Steering Committee, who have done a fantastic job of making sense of our source materials and pulling this plan together. They have been a great team to work with. The Working Groups also deserve a special note of thanks for pulling together so much information in such a short period of time. That work was critical to getting the drafting process started.

Finally, I want to personally thank everyone who has contributed to this process over the last year, because you’ve made my final “special assignment” at Penn State a much easier and enjoyable task!

Good luck to you all —

mike

We had an excellent strategic planning retreat on Monday March 24 during which we reviewed and discussed at great length the first working draft of the Libraries 2014-19 Strategic Plan.   This draft included two versions of our Mission, Vision, and Values statements, goals and objectives for each program area of the plan, and statements and goals under each of our foundational principles.  The discussion today was great, and we wish everyone could have taken part.

But you can still contribute:  we now invite everyone, including attendees of the retreat, to take a look and comment on this draft by visiting this blog’s sibling site:

sites.psu.edu/librarystrategyreports

I’ve highlighted the last word in that URL to draw your attention to the deliberate similarity in web addresses.  While our main blog site has been useful for sharing documents and news, it is harder to offer specific comments on various ideas.

The sibling site uses CommentPress,  a bit of software that supports comments at the level of the paragraph, which will give you the chance to ask questions about specific statements, or to offer up alternate wordings or thoughts in direct response to sections of the draft.  Many of you have offered ideas by emailing members of the committee directly, and you may of course continue to use that method if you choose.

The Steering Committee aims to have another public draft available after mid-April.  We ask that you submit any comments you have by April 1 to give us time to analyze the comments to prepare that next draft.

We have just added the report of our Mission, Vision, and Values working group to Working Group Reports page.   We asked the members of this group to “review [the Libraries’] existing statements and review similar statements from other research libraries. Then, with as much library-wide input as possible, please draft at least two re-statements of the Mission, Vision, Values of the Libraries that are dynamic and forward looking.”

You can provide feedback on these statements in two ways:

1) At next week’s Strategic Planning Retreat, if you are registered to attend; or

2) Leave a comment on the Working Group Reports page.  We’ve had several substantive comments posted there and we invite more.

As you know, multiple strategic planning working groups were underway during the month of February.  We’re pleased now to share with you the reports from those efforts.   Each team has done impressive work soliciting and synthesizing ideas and you should thank the members of those teams when you see them.

Please take a look at these and do share your ideas and feedback.   The steering committee will be using these reports to develop some iterations of the strategic planning framework.  They will be the primary source of material at the March 24 retreat (registration is still open until March 10.)

NOTE: we have reports from all the Foundational and Programmatic groups.  The Mission, Vision, and Values report is pending and we’ll notify everyone when it’s available.

The Libraries will hold an open Strategic Planning Retreat on March 24 in the Nittany Lion Inn.  At this meeting we’ll draw heavily upon the results of our seven working groups to give more definition to the goals and strategies the University Libraries will pursue over the next five years.  Our expected schedule is to begin at 10:00am and end by 4:00pm. Attendees will receive lunch and there will be breaks for coffee and snacks.

This retreat is open to any full-time libraries employee:  staff or faculty.   The Libraries Administration anticipates that supervisors will make every effort to accommodate an employee’s wish to participate in this event.

Although this is an open event, you must register by March 10 to participate.  A limited number of hotel rooms are being held at the Nittany Lion Inn for attendees traveling to University Park. If you expect to need a hotel room, I ask that you register by the end of day, Thursday February 27.  We will assign those on a first-come, first-served basis, so you should register early.

Finally, a word about process.  When the working groups submit their reports at the end of February, we’ll move those online for public review and comment as soon as possible.   At the retreat, we will likely be discussing new drafts of our mission, vision, and values, as well as possible goals and strategies to pursue over the next five years.  By the end of April we hope to have a relatively coherent draft strategic plan available for review and comment.

Feel free to send questions to members of the Steering Committee, or to use the comment features on the Strategic Planning website to do so.

Our February Frenzy of Strategic Planning in the University Libraries is moving quickly.

On Thursday the 6th we held a open forum to discuss our work in the three programmatic areas (Teaching & Learning; Discovery, Access, & Preservation; Advancing University Research). If you missed it, Mike Furlough took some very rough and uncorrected notes, and if you’re a Libraries employee you can watch the recording of that forum.   On Monday the 17th at 3pm we’ll hold our second forum of the month on the three foundational issues (Diversity; Ethics & Integrity; and Sustainability).

Today we’re releasing two surveys to give you another avenue for contributing to the development of our strategic plan.

Take the survey on Programmatic Topics

Take the survey on Foundational Issues

The working groups on foundational issues encourage you to respond to their survey before February 14, so that they can incorporate your ideas into their forum.

Participation at last week’s forum was fantastic–we’re looking forward to a great discussion on Foundational Issues on the 17th at 3pm in Foster Auditorium and on MediaSiteLive.

As announced in our January Strategic Planning Update, several working groups have begun working on topics including in the Libraries Strategic Planning Framework.  Each working group tackles a specific piece of the Libraries Framework for Strategic Planning, and during the month of February they are looking for your ideas regarding the Libraries future.

One of several ways we’ll be gathering your input will be through two strategic planning forums in February, which are open to all Libraries employees who are interested. These will be available via MediaSite Live.  No registration is required: we only ask that you if you come, you participate.

Thursday February 6 at 11:00am
Foster Auditorium, University Park (also via MediaSite Live)

Topics:  Programmatic Areas, including Teaching & Learning; Discovery, Access, & Preservation; and Advancing University Research.

Monday February 17 at 3:00pm
Foster Auditorium, University Park (also via MediaSite Live)

Topics: Foundational Issues, including Diversity; Ethics & Integrity; and Sustainability.

We hope you’ll have time to participate, and if not, to contact any of the members of the steering committee or working groups to share your ideas.

Now that we have begun 2014 in earnest, it’s time to continue with the University Libraries strategic planning for 2014-2019.   The spring semester is going to be a very busy time for planning, and there will be multiple opportunities to contribute your ideas.

Summary of Retreat

In November, when we held our first retreat on Strategic Planning we asked participants to identify the most important issue for the Libraries to address in the next five years.  Not surprisingly, the responses varied widely, but themes topics such as information literacy, staffing, budget, discovery, outreach, communicating our value, and preservation of scholarship.  We reported on the retreat more fully last month.

Based on the discussion and notes from that retreat, the Steering Committee has developed a framework for the Libraries strategic plan, and have charged a number of working groups to delve into specific topics more fully.

Framework

Click to enlarge

This graphic is a very rough sketch to help conceptualize the potential components of our plan and how they fit together.   It’s not a table of contents, but by using it as a framework at this time, it can help us think about the relative importance of various issues and how we can guide decision-making in the future.  There are three major areas in this framework:

The Mission, Vision and Values sit at the top.  These elements answer the questions:  What are the Libraries for?  Why do we do what we do?

Out of all the ideas and feedback provided at the retreat, the Steering Committee identified three major programmatic areas, highlighted on the graphic in blue boxes.  The Libraries mission is largely carried out through activities in the areas of Teaching & Learning; Discovery, Access & Preservation; and in Advancing University Research. Regardless of where you sit in the Libraries, you contribute to at least one of these, and it’s very likely that you contribute to all three.  These elements address the question:  What do we do?  What is our contribution to the University?

The Provost’s instructions also asked us to answer some specific questions on Diversity, Ethics & Integrity, and Sustainability.   Following those instructions compels us to think critically about how these topics inform our decision-making and programs.   So we’ve identified these three areas as foundational, and in the next several months we’ll craft principles for the Libraries in each of these three areas.  A fourth foundational area, Resource Allocation, was of great interest at the retreat.  Taken together, these topics help to address the question:  How will we make decisions?

Working Groups

All of those items on the framework are huge topics, so we have charged several working groups to focus on each one.  Each working group is very small–just four or five people, including a chair.  Each group’s charge is unique, but all are asked to address roughly the same questions in developing their report.

Each group has responsibility for soliciting input from the entire libraries during the month of February.  These working groups will use a variety of means of reaching out to all of you for your ideas, so you should have opportunities to share your thoughts.

The Working Groups section of this site includes the charge and membership of all groups.

Forums

We are planning to hold a couple of open forums on strategic planning in February.  The schedule for these events will be finalized this week.  Each will be held in Foster Auditorium at University Park and broadcast over MediaSite Live to allow participation across all campuses.  We are also working on plans for another strategic planning retreat in March, after the Working Groups complete their tasks.

Participate

As we’ve said before: the most important part of strategic planning in widespread engagement among all members of the University Libraries.   The end result will be richer and more meaningful if you contribute as fully as possible, so we hope you’ll make some mental space and calendar time to contribute your ideas to the discussions.

Sustainability and Strategic Planning
Jeremy Bean & Rob Andrejewski
Penn State Sustainability Institute

Tuesday December 17 @ 2:00 pm
Foster Auditorium, UP / Media Site Live
As part of our strategic planning efforts this year, the University has asked that the Libraries and all units address sustainability planning. The Libraries have taken environmental sustainability very seriously in recent years, expanding our recycling efforts and forming “green teams” to help us reduce our environmental impacts. But how should the Libraries think about Sustainability as a strategic issue?  What are the unique contributions we can make to the University’s sustainability efforts?

Please join us on Tuesday, December 17 at 2pm in Foster Auditorium (or via MediaSite Live) for a discussion of sustainability planning at Penn State.  Jeremy Bean and Rob Andrejewski of the Penn State Sustainability Institute will provide background on the University’s efforts and how other academic colleges are integrating sustainability into their programs.  Discussion will focus on how the Libraries can define and address sustainability in our own strategic plan for 2014-19.

Jeremy Bean is the Assistant Director for Sustainability Planning and Operations within the Sustainability Institute at Penn State.  His primary responsibility is to facilitate sustainability planning across all areas of the university.  His work helps to deepen the understanding of sustainability and draw forth unique contributions to sustainability that are supported by the mission of the unit.  Jeremy also works to identify strategic educational assets that can be created to support the mission of the University in a way that creates collaboration and builds capacity for change.  The most exciting part of his work is getting to meet and work with many diverse and amazing individuals.

Rob Andrejewski is Associate Director of Engagement at Penn State’s Sustainability Institute. Rob develops processes to engage the campus community on sustainability-related topics, facilitates sustainability planning, and manages student programming. Rob regularly leads discussions on sustainability, behavior change, leadership, and a host of projects happening at Penn State. Rob received his PhD from Penn State in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management (RPTM), where he is now an affiliate faculty member. He is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, a dynamic network of more than 500 of the nation’s top emerging environmental leaders.

Notes from the discussion are here.

At the Library Faculty Retreat on November 20, faculty and staff began the strategic planning process by engaging in a lively and productive discussion on the future direction of the University Libraries. The discussion started off with a brainstorming session on the ideal academic library, followed by an exploration of the challenges we face in achieving that ideal. The final portion of the retreat was devoted to discussing and identifying the single most important thing we need to address in the next five years.

The ideal library was conceived as a collaborative, learning centered space that functions as the hub of academic life. This perfect library is easy to use, welcoming, and innovative, and focuses on preserving information for the future while providing essential services to the campus community. Challenges in creating and sustaining the ideal library of the future focused on the changing nature of libraries and the world of information, including maintaining the professional identity of librarians, protecting library space, articulating the value of libraries, and defining the meaning of a library. Other challenges included staffing and human resource issues, such as loss of expertise through retirements, developing skills in staff, and calcified administrative structures and roles for librarians and staff.

The final discussion on identifying the single most important thing to be addressed in the near future elicited suggestions related to access and discovery, staff development, information literacy, outreach, workplace culture, space planning, and preservation. The suggestion receiving the highest number of votes (27) was integrating information literacy into the curriculum. Other top vote getters related to staffing, human resources, and workplace culture, such as organizing staff and budget competitively, leveraging human resources and succession planning, and building a flexible support structure. Access and discovery emerged as major themes in the discussion, prompting suggestions to improve content delivery systems and discovery of digital resources. Other important themes included outreach and communicating the library’s value to the campus community.

We have prepared a bulleted summary of the major themes that emerged during the retreat, which includes the results of voting on ideas for the “most important thing.”

The Strategic Planning Steering Committee will be using the discussion and notes from the retreat to identify topics to investigate further for strategic planning.  After the first of the year we will be appointing some subcommittees to carry out some of this work, and we are also planning additional forums on various strategic planning topics.    We continue to welcome your ideas, so contact us or comment below.

Read the complete notes from the Retreat.