Introduction

Regular recipients of the Libraries’ Annual Report may have wondered whether or not we had anything to report for the 2000-2001 year. Well we did, but we decided that, since the 1999-2000 report had served in some ways as a retrospective report on the growth and development of the Libraries in its first century, the 2000-2001 report should provide a preview of the next century. And to demonstrate the potential of the next century, we decided to provide a multi-media product, so that the medium would indeed incorporate the message.

Since risk-taking and experimentation is an expressed value in our library culture, we decided to model that behavior and take the risk of trying to produce a multi-media report and to experiment first hand with some of the technologies that we want to be able to share with students and faculty in the academic community. On the one hand, we were unable to meet our deadlines given some unforeseen projects that came along, but, on the other hand, we have learned a great deal about project management and the technologies that will be common tools in teaching, learning, and information management in our future.

The result of our efforts to give you a glimpse of the future is included with this report, but the report itself includes a record of progress during the years 2000-2001 and 2001-2002. We hope you will take a few minutes to share in our successes during these years but also take a few minutes to journey with us into the 21st century library that we are trying to build.

The Challenge of Change

Our 1999-2000 annual report discussed our new strategic plan and its formulation. We were excited by the possibilities it presented us for engaging in new program activities and for redefining the role of an academic research library in a university that values both research and learning. But while our strategic plan defined new roles for the Libraries, the organizational structure within which we worked and the culture we had established did not necessarily support new directions and new definitions. Clearly if we were to succeed, it had become necessary to focus the Libraries’ work and human resources on our new directions.

With this in mind, the Libraries underwent a significant reorganization, not one that would only move the boxes around, but one that would try to eliminate boxes entirely and create an organization that not only valued collaboration but that thrived and depended on it. We wanted to work in an organizational framework that was focused on the primary goals expressed in our strategic plan – the things we said were important to us.

The information society of the 21st century demands that its participants be skilled information users, and while we have for decades taught students the use of specific products to accomplish their work, this emerging demand provided the opportunity to take a more active role in preparing students for the important roles they would play in the world. While we need to continue to provide task-based instructional support, we recognized that we needed to find ways to build strong foundations of information competencies as well. One of the features of our new organization is a program in Information Literacy, aimed primarily at providing these foundational competencies.

Another feature of 21st century information is the ability to take libraries and information that previously were outside the classroom and curriculum and deliver them wherever learning was occuring. We had already created a Digital Library Services program, but our restructuring resulted in a program doubled in size and greatly enlarged in scope, one aspect of which is the support of faculty and students in using the most up-to-date information tools.

For a long time our Information Services librarians have labored under an almost unachievable burden of balancing reference, collection development, instruction, and outreach for many departments and academic units, sometimes with very large numbers of faculty. Despite their visibility, it was obvious that we were frequently behind the wave of change within the academy. New programs would develop without warning, large numbers of students were not being reached effectively, and librarians were spending many of their hours answering fairly routine and repetitive questions and solving basic problems (e.g. the printer isn’t working; how do I find a journal article).

To address these issues, we restructured the responsibilities of these librarians and the models for how we deal with reference and collection development. We established a tiered reference service in which the reference desk is staffed by well-trained, senior library assistants, with librarians being available for consultation on any matter that is more complex, presents unusual problems, or requires significant subject expertise or research skill.

In addition, we created a new core of subject librarians whose responsibilities were focused on building a strong information resource. This move toward a more centralized collection management system was in response to a rapidly changing model for scholarly publication, with more and more content coming in aggregated products tied up in complex licenses, and also in response to the longstanding need to create a holistic collection of digital and traditional information resources focused on the evolving programs of the University. It also allows for a continuing program of assessment to be applied to our collections so that we can measure their effectiveness.

Through these changes it is intended that the librarians responsible for taking the library out to the community can spend more of their time in interactions with faculty, in support of the in-depth research needs of graduate students, and in enriching the entry of upper level undergraduates as they begin their work in their chosen disciplines. In addition, they are charged with increasing the number of students who are connected to library services, with an ultimate goal of reaching every student.

There are many other changes that underlie our restructuring efforts, but those already mentioned are the most visible to our customers. We spent much time in the last two years crafting this new structure and putting it into place. We have had to learn to work in new ways and form new relationships. It has not been an easy road, but by the end of 2001/2002, we had made considerable progress, and the future looks good.

Thomas L. Wilding