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