Strategic Planning Discussion, Table 8
November 20, 2013
Ideal Academic Library
– able to articulate an understanding of information literacy that everyone (librarians, students and teaching faculty) can understand. A model of information literacy that can understood by all
-electronic, efficient, economical, welcoming
-even as libraries become more electronic, the idea of library as place is not going away. Campus libraries may serve as regional hubs. Libraries will be gathering places
-the library will meet the needs of users wherever and whoever they are
-the ideal library will have the money to maintain these places and staffing
-will develop mechanisms that reach out to users
-will have enough flexibility to be agile and do what we need to do
-generalist/specialist. Specialists will offer the depth of expertise but also work on expanding their capacities as generalists and be able to answer any question
-will be cost-effective and efficient by 2020
-needs people
-ideal library needs to strike balance across the board—physical place/online offerings, generalist/specialist, information literacy definition that meets all needs
Challenges
-competition for good staff/faculty. Penn State funding, locations, demographics can make attracting the skilled people we need to be the ideal library challenging
-IT challenges. There is need for people and skills to address these challenges, which can be difficult to acquire (see above)
-Organizational challenges. Are we organized in a way that makes us flexible?
-Becoming greater than the sum of our parts. There are pockets of innovation but they are not brought together
-millennials are not as technologically advanced as we might expect or assume so we need to design intuitive tools for instruction and access. We would be able to spend more time and focus on concepts than on directions (“push this button”).
-Is our geographically dispersed structure a challenge or asset? Both. It can be a challenge to standardization and sharing best practices. There may be imbalances in our collections budget. Again striking the balance is the challenge-local needs vs. aggregate needs. On the other hand, because of the geographically dispersed structure there may be more richness and variety in our collections
-e-book platforms are not ideal. Many students do not like e-books but does this speak to a preference for printed books or the lack of suitable e-book platforms?
Single Most Important Thing
-Money
-People
-archiving/preservation of electronic info from licensed content and PSU research
-communicating our value to the learning and research mission of the university
-supporting the researchers the way they do research (ex. Scholarsphere as part of the research workflow)
-acknowledging that rollout of a product/service is not an endpoint. It continues/evolves
-better integrating flexibility and agility into our operations and activities