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Provide programming that leads to academic excellence and innovation. Offer engagement and services that support learning. Encourage connectivity both on and off campus. These familiar university-wide goals naturally welcome the resources and services of academic libraries. Yet, when higher education institutions complete their long-term strategic plans, mention of the necessary scholarly contributor is frequently missing. Notably, university leaders acknowledge that libraries operate as an academic and social hub on campus, and the tie between provosts’ expectations and libraries’ abilities remains strong. However, the understood value of academic libraries attaches an ironic twist to a reputation of reliability and durability.
“On many campuses, I think libraries are generally seen as service and support programs rather than sources of strategic insight at the institutional level,” shares Rick Anderson, university librarian at Brigham Young University. “There’s some truth to this — obviously, one of the primary value propositions of the library is its support role for instruction and research — but wise library leaders will watch for opportunities to contribute to institutional strategic thinking.”
The university librarian, who also collaborated as the lead author of Strategic Planning for Academic Libraries: A Step-by-Step Guide, explains that opportunities to align with university goals are readily provided through regular meetings with provosts and deans councils. Basically, once library leaders successfully communicate how their vision supports overarching university priorities, the chance of being invited to the strategic planning table increases. “What librarians and library leaders say and what they demonstrate in this regard are both very important,” Anderson adds. “University leaders need to hear library leaders express their support for the institution’s mission, goals, and strategic directions, and need to see the library organization and all of its employees actively doing things that are aligned with those directions and further those goals.”
Florida State University Libraries also shares the opinion that misconceptions exist as to the full scope and services of libraries, which prevents some host institutions from considering them as strategic partners. Moreover, FSU Libraries encourages academic libraries to both explain and demonstrate why they play such a central role in strategic planning — and to take such action before specialized teams begin to collaborate and before leaders start this complex process rolling. The Libraries pulls from its own contributions made to university-wide strategic planning and planning at a library level when suggesting that academic libraries place emphasis on the ability to ensure equitable access to information, to enhance research and scholarship, to promote critical thinking, and to serve as a center of the intellectual community.
“Subject Librarians support faculty and student research by helping researchers discover, access, and obtain resources, model how to assess and evaluate those resources, teach information and data literacy, and collaborate with research teams conducting systematic reviews,” FSU Libraries recognizes. “We provide lecture series on topics that inspire and cause us to think critically about issues and events that affect us deeply,” (Emmett Till Lecture Series, for example). Outside of providing accessibility to resources and prompting meaningful conversations, FSU Libraries offers a Dissertation Bootcamp & Writing Retreat to assist budding scholars as they manage the demands of their own research and analysis. Moreover, the Libraries works with campus instructors to encourage students to use available archives and collections, leading to the benefit of integrating primary source materials in specific areas of research. Pointing to big data initiatives at universities, FSU Libraries contributes to the Health Data Sciences Initiative, which includes the perspectives of campus stakeholders as the university strives to make an impact on interdisciplinary research.
However, the challenge to receive opportunity and mention of libraries’ services and collaboration is not isolated to just university-wide strategic planning. It extends to short-term goals as well. Welcome weeks, freshmen orientation events, and university-parent newsletters are traditionally launched to reach targeted audiences — mainly students, families, and key stakeholders — and to help kick off the start of a new semester. Branding and controlled visibility serve as strategic approaches applied to showcase higher education through the lens of academic opportunity, diversity, campus experiences, and potential career options, so to leave out the face value of a library’s interlibrary loan service or available quiet spaces makes solid marketing sense. Still, if universities distribute campus-driven publications and highlight student organizations, advising, and recreation centers, why not creatively frame significant positions and resources from the field of librarianship that help connect college communities to the vision of academic excellence and, ultimately, to align with long-term strategic plans?
FSU Libraries shares helpful advice geared to strengthen the connection between academic libraries and university-wide strategic planning.
- Make sure that the library is proactive in forming partnerships across campus
- Find opportunities to tell a library’s story across campus about what it does to build awareness
- Promote library representation and participation in highly visible roles on campus (like serving on the Faculty Senate) who can build awareness regarding what libraries do — outside of the image of holding a collection of books
- Proactively offer data or statistics regarding library use
- Illustrate how libraries assessment and outreach practices can be applied to the strategic planning process as a model of measurement (like weekly library visitor counts reports used to make decisions about extending library hours)
In addition, BYU’s university librarian remains positive that host institutions will continue to place value in a library’s ability to directly meet instructional needs and to provide access to high-quality research content. As these fundamental factors nurture scholarly growth and exploration among students and faculty, academic libraries will remain necessary locations on campus where individual and group work develop. “Beyond those core functions, libraries need to be paying close attention to the expressed priorities of their institutions and responding nimbly to them — services and programs that make little sense at one institution may be of great importance at another,” notes Anderson. “The greater the demonstrated and expressed alignment of the library with the institution’s mission and goals, the more likely the library will be seen as an essential strategic partner — which leads to a virtuous cycle of involvement and integration.”
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