Library Mission Statement

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