Library Mission Statement
The
Library’s unique and vital role is to further the University’s
mission of generating and disseminating knowledge through teaching,
learning, research, and service. The Library is an essential academic
center that serves as a place of discovery, exchange, and advancement
of ideas through its commitment to accessing new scholarship and archiving
accumulated knowledge.
Staff
are dedicated to offering the highest level of service in responding
to the information needs of its diverse users and in helping users
understand and effectively use new and traditional forms of information
delivery.
The
first priority of the Library is to provide these services to Vanderbilt
faculty and students through active outreach across the campus.
Secondarily, the Library is a resource for the larger academic and
scholarly community through its participation in cooperative and
collaborative local, regional, and national partnerships.
Vision Statement
The library
is an academic center for learning, intellectual discovery and exploration
as both a physical place and a virtual space. The Library is a strategic
partner of the University in pursuing academic excellence among
the top-ranked educational institutions of the nation.
We will enable
our users, empower our staff, and embrace the digital present. Our
users will gain access to what they need, when and where they need
it, and in the form that is most useful to them. Our staff will
have cutting edge knowledge and skills and be empowered to offer
the highest quality of service possible. We will continue to enhance
and preserve our print collection while fostering digital collections
and services to give our faculty and students every opportunity
to succeed in their academic ventures.
Other academic
support units are invited to partner with the Library in creating
a new "center for academic life" to provide a wide range
of academic services in support of learning, teaching and research.
Hallmarks of this new center will be: collaboration with students
and faculty in their teaching and research projects; building long-term
relationships and awareness among the partners and those they serve;
seamless access and minimal barriers to resources and staff; excellence
of service regardless of college affiliation; and a balance between
resources and commitments, fostered by a climate of evaluation and
assessment.
Statement of Goals
The publication
of Vanderbilt's Strategic Plan provided the impetus for the development
of the Heard Library system's own strategic plan. The focus on change,
creativity, and institutional identity in the University's plan
provided valuable direction for the Library's efforts.
The Heard Library
system is a significant contributor to the University's goals of
teaching, research, and service. In the face of the changing nature
of information delivery and changes in the University's strategic
emphasis, the Library must reexamine its services and organization,
focusing on ease of access and the trans-institutional nature of
scholarship. A new vision of the Library is proposed, one that both
recognizes the needs of students and faculty in a digital age while
acknowledging the library's ongoing functions as archive, provider
and organizer of information, and a physical place for study, dialogue,
and learning.
To strengthen
its position as a strategic asset to the University, the Library
has established the following five-year goals:
1. The Library
will become a trans-institutional "Center for Academic Life".
2. The Library
will develop a comprehensive plan for space utilization and collection
management in an environment of limited capital expansion.
3. The Library
will build a powerful infrastructure for digital collections and
services.
4. The Library
will develop, in consultation with faculty, a cross-college information
competencies instruction program to educate students in the use,
evaluation, and management of information resources.
5. The Library
will communicate more effectively with our users.
As a next step,
the Library will develop a detailed implementation plan to accomplish
its five goals. We will devise "trans-library" budgetary,
personnel deployment, policy, and organizational tactics. Most important,
we will cultivate a library organization and climate that will help
us attain our goals.
· We
will strengthen our user-centered orientation and constantly work
toward understanding and meeting the needs of the Vanderbilt academic
community.
· We
will cultivate a climate of assessment to measure our success, adjusting
our course in light of what we learn.
· We
will strengthen our commitment to service quality.
· We
will be a learning organization in which staff acquire new skills
at an increased pace to keep current with technological change.
· We
will foster a strong collective identity that encourages a spirit
of cooperation and collaboration with common understanding, beliefs,
and behaviors throughout the library system, and that encourages
the staff to work together to provide effective and efficient services,
while at the same time endorsing divisional innovation.
May 2006
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