The Library exists to serve as an archive of accumulated knowledge, a gateway to scholarship, and a catalyst for the discovery and advancement of new ideas.  In fulfilling its obligation to provide knowledge to the University and the scholarly community at large, the Library collects, organizes, and provides access to recorded knowledge in all formats.  The Library Faculty initiates discussions and proposes creative solutions to the information challenges facing the University and the scholarly community.  The Library's faculty and staff actively participate in providing quality service, access, instruction, and management of scholarly information.

Information Literacy:

The goal of the information literacy program is to help students achieve information literacy competency. Information literate students are able to find, evaluate, and use information to solve problems and to make decisions effectively.  They have the knowledge and skills to function successfully as continuous learners in a continually changing information world.

The Library's objectives are 1) to integrate information literacy instruction throughout the curriculum within general education and within the majors, 2) to provide a scaffolded progression of knowledge and skill development over time as a student moves through his/her program of study, and 3) to measure student success through assessment of desired learning outcomes.  To accomplish its information literacy mission, library faculty work collaboratively with faculty in the colleges to identify learning outcomes, to achieve them, and to assess them.

In FY04, the Library will host at least 3 faculty colloquies and will develop collaborative teams of library and course faculty for each of the three colleges. These teams will identify information literacy learning outcomes for general education and all majors, will identify courses that will take responsibility for the outcomes, and will take their recommendations to the college faculties for formal adoption.

In addition, the Library will be developing a new and more interactive online information literacy tutorial to replace its existing tutorial.

Personal Touch: The Library will continue to work to review its policies and forms to solve and overcome restrictions on access and improve library services.  The Library will provide library web pages specifically for students to help them carry out research.  The Library will make improvements and additions to library homepage and develop additional content for its site on the World Wide Web.  The content will take the form of instructions, standard forms, tutorials, links, and subject webliographies.  The focus of this initiative is to continue to improve the productivity of the library staff while developing library services that truly meet the library’s goal of providing students at a distance with the same level of excellent library services accorded the on-campus student.  It is anticipated that any web-enabled service developed for distance students would benefit the on-campus student as well.

Collection Management: The Library is committed to developing its collection of print and electronic journals, indexes and texts.  The Library is particularly concerned with providing appropriate access and materials for the new graduate and undergraduate programs.  The Library will seek opportunities to expand its holdings of print and digital information.  The Library will incorporate appropriate new technologies and changes in systems and software. 

Preservation: The Library is committed to the preservation of the collections in the library, which includes the University Archives.  The first priority of its preservation initiative is the development of a written preservation plan, one that includes a disaster plan along with appropriate rules and regulations for access to collections, esp. the special collections like Rare Books and the University Archives.  These plans will guide the staff in protecting the library collections for the University Community. 

Diversity:  The Library will continue to provide multicultural materials to support the curriculum and promote sensitivity to other cultures.  In support of this initiative, the Library will investigate methods of assessing the multicultural materials in the current collection while seeking appropriate expansion of diverse collections; continue to work with the faculty and staff to procure materials to support multicultural education in the curriculum; work with the Office of Student Services to set up appropriate displays of library materials in support of the various cultural programming events on campus; seek to strengthen recruitment of diverse staff; and seek out opportunities to sponsor programming that supports diversity.