Vision Statement for Library Feasibility Study: Working Document, 2007
In examining the possible future for the UCR Libraries, many factors must be taken into consideration for successful functioning in the 21st century information and learning environment. The impact of shifts predicted to occur during the next 5-15 years in mechanisms for providing access to scholarly communication, the impact of the Web in transforming the ways in which information technology systems are built for delivery of information services, the demand of information seekers (students, faculty, researches) for libraries to provide “one stop shopping” via single sign-on and discovery tools to the glut of scholarly information, and the dramatic changes which have occurred in defining user vs. publisher/author rights to information as a result of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act present many opportunities and challenges in the delivery of responsive library services.
As a result of the information explosion via digital access, research libraries must now be positioned to easily handle wired and wireless devices within their premises. Media delivery and media production services are now in demand to support student's learning and experiential needs. Increasingly, libraries are taking on the role of collaborating with faculty and providing study skills programs to better prepare students with both critical information research skills and to inculcate the meaning of ethical use of digital information. In the midst of these changes, the presence of and demand for libraries to continue to acquire the world's output of paper based and print collections to support undergraduate education and graduate education and research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences disciplines, and some areas of the sciences, continues unabated for the foreseeable future. The world's output of scholarly print and multimedia resources has not declined as a result of the digital revolution. On the contrary, output in and demand for all formats has, rather, increased during the past several years.
The challenge to Libraries in the 21st century information and higher education environment is building and maintaining multifaceted collections, flexible facilities, and dynamic and responsive services that can easily accommodate on-site traditional research resources and digital information at the same time that users seek rapid information transfer via self-paced digital delivery systems and omni-present information technologies both on site and remotely on a 24/7 or other extended basis. Student study and research behavior has changed with the X and Y generations involving an expanded variety of learning styles requiring facilities and services that will support individual, team, and group based learning, and multi-tasking within an environment that equally supports ease, comfort, Starbucks coffee, and social space interspersed within serious study and research space. Flexible spaces are increasingly required which support faculty and student interactions and expanded community access.
Mass digitization projects through such commercial firms as Google, Microsoft, and the Open Content Alliance hold much promise for enhancing research and providing, in time, cost effective means of mass collection storage. Yet, these significant advancements have further complicated key issues surrounding digital formats and the costs associated with long-term institutional investments in acquiring, storing, and preserving scholarly resources. While acid free paper by American and Western European standards is guaranteed to last 300 years and microfilm formats are guaranteed, under normal conditions, to last 400 years, digital formats may only last 11 years and generally require expensive migration even sooner in consideration of materiel deterioration and the literal overnight changes that occur in the technology required to access digital resources. Thus, a national debate continues as to the research library's continuing role in preserving records of human culture as opposed to commercial vendors that tend to be less reliable as a result of mergers, bankruptcies, and tax laws impacting retention of back runs of books and journals, in that as commercial commodities, they are taxable.
The cost of scholarly information has not diminished in this evolving environment. Vendors have tended to charge whatever the market will bear. Alternative models to scholarly publishing are emerging, but as of yet present no serious challenges to the commercial side of the house. The unbundling of scholarly journals so that users/libraries may gain access by the article rather than by title may be the next wave of scholarly publication development, but research libraries will most likely continue to bear the brunt of the burden of cost as new systems emerge as a means of defraying/subsidizing the cost of access to end users.
It is in this new environment that the strategic plan for the UCR Libraries will be occurring and will be functioning for the foreseeable future. Therefore, the challenge is that we must plan for and envision in this environment the following:
· dynamically flexible, usable, attractive, space and facilities that will easily accommodate user access to conventional collections, emerging technologies, and support a variety of learning styles
· flexible program and collaborative space that will be able to grow, mutate, and change within the context of the needs of our primary clientele (faculty and students)
· space that will accommodate evolving services and staff work areas that will support study, instruction, research, and the dynamics of the rapidly evolving challenges of information access.
· UCR must also plan its library facilities in recognition of its role as a public and land-grant research institution with the goal of achieving AAU status.
Within this backdrop, the vision of the UCR Libraries is as follows:
1. To serve as an information commons and intellectual center for providing easy access to and delivery of the world's output of scholarly information in the various disciplines in support of student and faculty success.
2. To ensure the availability of on site research collections in various formats (print, digital, multimedia, microfomats) to meet the teaching, learning, and research needs of UCR faculty and students, with continuous planning to acknowledge budgetary and space imperatives coordinately with changes in format and distribution of scholarly output.
3. To effectively serve as the campus' central access and delivery and conversion node of digital information, on-site and remotely, deliverable where ever UCR faculty and students study and conduct research (labs, student residences, faculty homes, and abroad).
4. To make available to users broad band-width, wired and wireless, networking capacity in all library facilities
5. To transform library collections and resources from stand-alone comprehensive research collections to interdependent resources easily discoverable through web based discovery tools, single sign-on, and omni-present technologies.
6. To provide flexible, usable, and attractive user spaces that will accommodate a variety of learning and study styles (individual, team based, collaborative) as an extension of the classroom and other learning environments employed by faculty to enhance learning and student success
7. To support for 24/7 access on site and remotely.
8. To work as an active partner and collaborator with faculty to strengthen undergraduate students' basic information research skills through adjunct courses; interactive, online tutorials; and instruction integrated into major and other instructional modes.
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9. To attract and maintain an ethnically, culturally and educationally diverse and highly competent staff in support of student and faculty success, with effective work space, efficient work processes, and state-of- the art equipment to engage them fully in the University's goals of supporting faculty and student success.
10. To design library services and facilities that will embrace and celebrate the University's strong commitment to diversity and the pluralistic characteristics of the student body, with UCR being the most diverse campus within the UC system and the 4th most diverse in the nation.
11. To develop a program of assessment and to work closely with primary clientele to better understand how they use the library and information services and to position the Libraries to be able to respond rapidly to changing needs and usage patterns.
12. To maintain facilities and staff to enable the Libraries to contribute to the knowledge transformation process locally, UC system wide, and nationally through development of digital and knowledge preservation initiatives in support of scholarly communications.
13. To develop within the Libraries a viable platform to contribute to institutional, UC system wide, and national goals for knowledge preservation and digitization in support of transforming scholarly communications
