Strategic Directions and Goals 2011-16

Mission: Information and Library Services supports the mission of Bates College by planning, developing, implementing, and maintaining reliable and responsive information resources, services and programs to meet the evolving needs of the college community.

Vision: We build a high quality and service-oriented library and computing organization providing outstanding support for information and technology needs of the campus. We help users manage continuous change in modes of information use, information access, and communications media and technology.

 

Strategic Directions

Teaching, learning and research

  • Provide outstanding support of the information needs of the Bates curriculum and research programs in all formats.
  • Build and support technology facilities and services that support teaching and research activities of the faculty and learning needs of the students.
  • Continue to strengthen archives and special collections, and scholarship centered on the original and unique materials.

Technology for the entire campus

  • Provide ubiquitous and reliable computing networks for all campus users.
  • Reinforce the primacy of a centralized database and a secure computing environment as essential to the business, communications and decision-making functions of the college.
  • Be vigilant in promoting data security, protection of privacy, ethical use of data, and secure human practices in data use.

Mobile connectivity on and off the campus

  • Plan and deploy wireless access to information services as an essential element of scholarly and daily life.
  • Expand use of the “cloud.”

Management and partnerships

  • Provide outstanding support for all college offices as technology becomes an integral part of all college operations.
  • Build collaborative relationships with partners outside Bates.
  • Continue to emphasize effective management and stewardship of information and technology resources.
  • Strengthen efforts to seek outside support through grants, individual philanthropy and other funding opportunities.

 

 

Strategic Directions and Goals

Teaching, learning and research

1.    Provide outstanding support of the information needs of the Bates curriculum and research programs in all formats.

  • Provide information resources in all formats, recognizing that electronic formats are becoming the dominant mode in a growing number of scholarly fields.
  • Emphasize instructional programs and technologies to help users become expert in sorting through, assessing and mastering large amounts of information.
  • Building on past successes, implement new models of rapid information delivery.
  • Working with other learning support professionals on campus, strengthen support for  writing and speaking, data analysis, multimedia and other skills essential to student success. Incorporating some of these activities into the library may redefine what it means to have a “collection,” and what it means to be a library.

2.    Build and support technology facilities and services that support teaching and research activities of the faculty and learning needs of the students.

  • Continue to support robust services in visual representation of data, learning management systems, language pedagogy, humanities computing, and video and multimedia applications.
  • Anticipating greater demands for technology services among members of the faculty, promote and fund experimentation with new technologies for faculty members and students.

3.    Continue to strengthen archives and special collections, and scholarship centered on the original and unique materials.

  • Continue to build official college archives and records management services.
  • Strengthen programs to create and promote the use of special collections in all formats.
  • Develop archival and records management functions for college records (administrative and academic) that originate in electronic formats.

Technology for the entire campus

4.    Provide ubiquitous and reliable computing networks for all campus users.

  • Build the campus technology infrastructure to be redundant and fault tolerant and fully integrated into the Campus Facilities Master Plan.
  • Assure timely replacement of computers, media equipment, servers, network devices and other related technologies.
  • Develop authentication systems that enable use of personally owned devices and external services while continuing to secure college data.
  • Continue efforts to reduce the number of college-owned computers while expanding access to data and information.

5.    Reinforce the primacy of a centralized database and a secure computing environment as essential to the business, communications and decision-making functions of the college.

  • Continue to add secure Web-enabled applications to extend the functionality directly to users.
  • Look for ways to integrate access, ease use of the systems and promote effective communication.
  • Pay particular attention to efficiency, identifying opportunities to reduce costs, duplication of effort and unnecessary paperwork.

6.    Be vigilant in promoting data security, protection of privacy, ethical use of data, and secure human practices in data use.

  • Deploy authentication systems that secure access to official and licensed information, and effective educational efforts with all users.
  • Look for models to meet the imperatives of data security while at the same time achieving industry standards of convenience and ease-of-use.
  • Address the challenges that arise as secure technology services are extended to new groups of users, including, for example, parents and alumni volunteers.

Mobile connectivity on and off the campus

7.    Plan and deploy wireless access to information services as an essential element of scholarly and daily life.

  • Expand wireless service to all interior spaces on campus.
  • Build or adopt technologies needed to enhance access to the commercial cellular network on campus.
  • Develop, adopt and/or extend library and technology services to mobile devices, providing information services that will be available to all Bates people wherever they are.

8.    Expand use of the “cloud.”

  • Look for efficient, secure and cost-effective ways to incorporate off-campus technology and information services.
  • Continuing successful tradition of outsourcing processing and transactional services, look for additional ways to enhance Bates services with off-campus technologies.
  • Assess the need for off-campus locations for critical campus technology services, including disaster recovery services.

Management and partnerships

9.    Provide outstanding support for all college offices as technology becomes an integral part of all college operations.

  • Strengthen key partnerships with operations, reporting, data analysis and project management staff in college offices to make the most effective use of new technologies.

10.    Build collaborative relationships with partners outside Bates.

  • Programs like the CBB consortium and MaineREN have become cornerstones of library and technology services of the college. Extend partnerships with library and information technology organizations in other colleges as a way of improving services to Bates people.
  • Recognizing that development and maintenance of a trust relationship with a collaborative partner is more important than distance, look for ways to strengthen the college through work with others.

11.    Continue to emphasize effective management and stewardship of information and technology resources.

  • Continue to emphasize transparent budgeting and priority-setting, with faculty, staff and student involvement.
  • Create a working environment that promotes flexibility and creativity among library, technology and other learning support professionals in order to provide comprehensive support services for students, faculty and staff.
  • Promote data-enabled decision making and high level of accountability for both planning and operations.
  • Work within framework established for implementation of the Campus Facilities Master Plan to improve work space for ILS, especially by reducing the number of staffed locations.

12.    Strengthen efforts to seek outside support through grants, individual philanthropy and other funding opportunities.