Strategic Planning Overview
Process
During the Winter/Spring Terms of 2011, the Portland State University Library conducted a series of scenario-based visioning and planning sessions, which resulted in this Strategic Plan for 2012-2014. The Library used the University’s strategic mission and guiding themes to inform its process, in addition to incorporating user input and feedback obtained by way of:
- A pre-planning Faculty Forum held in early 2010
- Faculty Senate Library Committee participation and communication in 2010/2011
- A student focus group session held in April 2011, comprised of invited participants from ASPSU, SALP, and student ambassadors.
- A brief Council of Deans discussion about the Library’s new vision
- A discussion about the Library’s new vision during a Faculty Senate meeting in May 2011
- A Town Hall meeting held in May 2011
The Library developed this Strategic Plan in a context where many paradigm-shifting social, technological, environmental, educational, political, and aesthetic factors were affecting its operations. These factors have created a situation where the Library has experienced decreased funding and staffing levels at the same time that it has experienced increased demands for resources, instruction, consultation, technological infrastructure, space, and services from most of its diverse constituencies. For this reason especially, we believe that our implementation of a focused, forward-thinking strategic plan, along with applying clear assessment and evaluation metrics, are critical to the continued success and vitality of the University Library.
Vision
The Portland State University Library is the heart of the Portland State community, providing excellence and innovation in research, teaching, and learning support in a rapidly changing information environment. Along with its significant collection of information resources, the University Library delivers a superlative reference and instruction program dedicated to improving students’ academic success, offers outstanding special collections and archives featuring unique materials of regional and scholarly interest, and provides an extensive array of user-centered information services. Located in an iconic building in the beautiful South Park Blocks, the University Library serves the largest student body in the Oregon University System by providing collaborative study spaces and technology-enabled environments designed to enhance students’ learning experiences.
Core Themes
The Library is the campus’s main provider and steward of shared, high-quality information resources. Using an approach informed by discipline-specific needs, the Library continues to act as the main provider, manager, and preserver of shared, high-quality information resources, turning increasingly to electronic, demand-driven, and access-based models, while becoming less reliant on print collections stored on site. This function depends upon the Library’s strong collaboration with departmental faculty in order to ensure that diversity in scholarly practice is considered during decision making (e.g., humanities scholars’ heavier use of monographic materials published over longer time periods, or scientists’ heavier use of current journal articles). This function also includes a strategic focus on unique materials and data for campus repositories, digital collections, special collections, and archives, with the Library serving as original publisher of scholarly information when appropriate. It depends upon the Library’s leadership and extensive partnerships with other institutions, as universities move toward a greater use of regional repositories for access to materials held in common by academic libraries.
The Library provides the University with valuable information expertise in a rapidly changing information environment. The Library serves as the University’s main expert and instructional resource for changing forms of academic information creation, discovery, content, and delivery. In this role, the Library helps the University achieve global excellence by providing leadership in the area of new scholarly communication models, which includes open access initiatives. The Library identifies and performs work related to customized systems, tools, and content which will improve information discovery and access. It acts as an important strategic partner in research collaborations, and contributes to the campus’s data management infrastructure, providing such services as research data curation, access, and preservation. The Library is the campus’s collaborative teaching partner, working to improve students’ academic success and enhance educational opportunity.
The Library is a collaborative teaching partner, working with departmental faculty to integrate information literacy into the curricula, and to provide teaching of information literacy skills and research strategies to students in all disciplines. The Library offers a superlative instruction and reference program in a variety of modalities that is reflected in campus-wide learning outcomes, especially in relation to creative and critical thinking. It uses complementary technologies in its instruction program and in its learning spaces that will improve students’ academic success.
The Library is the main provider and manager of shared learning spaces on campus. The Library provides and manages an expanding array of technology- and resource-rich academic spaces for collaborative and individual learning in a shared academic environment. Library services are more effective when collocated with other academic services; to this end, the Library will continue to work with other campus units to improve academic services within its physical and virtual spaces, extending beyond the brick-and-mortar confines of the Millar building.
Goals, Objectives, and Action Items
Please see our Strategic Plan 2012-14.
Our Past Strategic Plans & Accomplishments
