GOAL 1: Excellence in services and personnel
GOAL 2: Build and Strengthen Relationships
GOAL 3: Reward Experimentation and Support Continuous Improvement
GOAL 4: Practice Active and Respectful Stewardship
2018-2023 Oregon State University Libraries and Press Mission
The OSU Libraries and Press cultivate excellence in scholarship and creativity, empower discovery, and preserve and disseminate knowledge. Our work is rooted in our commitment to openness, inclusion, equity and diversity. We advance OSU’s mission by contributing to learning success, scholarly excellence and community engagement, and by respectful and proactive stewardship.
2018-2023 Oregon State University Libraries and Press Vision
The OSU Libraries and Press will be at the center of learning and scholarship at Oregon State University. As a resource for our communities, we will provide tools and expertise to support academic success. In support of this, we will reach across boundaries, bridge gaps, and break down silos to encourage curiosity-based engagement and create learning opportunities.
2018-2023 Oregon State University Strategic Goals and Priorities
Emphasize High Quality Services and Expertise
a. At OSULP, we are deeply committed to service, which we define broadly and proactively. This commitment informs our users’ experiences of our physical and virtual spaces as well as our teaching, scholarship and publishing. We will continue to create a user experience that is welcoming, inclusive, inspiring, comfortable and productive.
b. We contribute a unique combination of skills and expertise to our communities. Our services are stronger when they’re grounded in that expertise and when we can use what we know to support our communities. We’ll focus our energy on finding ways to apply our expertise to help the members of our communities to accomplish their goals and enrich their lives.
Build and Strengthen Relationships
a. At OSULP, we believe that our contributions to our communities and to our professions are rooted in the relationships that we build. As a library and press, we occupy a unique place in the university, and one that allows us to reach across disciplinary boundaries and organizational structures. More than any other unit at this university, we can bring people together, bridge gaps and break down silos.
b. We aspire to ground our work in maintaining user privacy while increasing accessibility, openness and inclusion. We will find opportunities to lead by bringing individuals and groups together to work on important issues. We will build relationships across the state and beyond, to support OSU’s land, sea, space, and sun grant missions. We will use our professional relationships to build our expertise, expand our programs and increase our impact. We will engage our communities in co-creative projects to improve our services and spaces, and enrich our users’ experiences.
Reward Experimentation and Support Continuous Improvement
a. At OSULP, we take pride in finding creative solutions to complex challenges. To succeed, we cannot be afraid to fail. We will create structures to reward excellence and experimentation at all levels of the organization, and to collect and use the lessons learned from trial and error. We will build support for iterative development, research and testing, and emphasize habits of transparency, mindfulness and critical reflection in our work and planning.
Practice Active and Respectful Stewardship
a. At OSULP, we are committed to supporting, preserving, sharing and honoring the cultural and intellectual output of our communities and the universe of information. As an organization, we must also take care of the people that make us who we are by nurturing healthy work environments, work-life balance and opportunities for growth and learning. So, too, must we deliberately and wisely steward the physical, digital, economic and natural resources entrusted to us.
b. Respectful, ethical, and active stewardship is rooted in listening, in deepening and honoring relationships, and in responding proactively from the foundation of our mission, vision, values, experience and expertise. We will listen to our communities — both internal and external — with open minds, and use what we find to continue building OSU Libraries and Press into a place where people can do extraordinary work. We will strive to balance the needs of the present with the needs of the future, such that we respond nimbly, flexibly and vigorously to existing challenges and opportunities while building a strong Libraries and Press for the future.
Proposed Priorities
Internal Priorities
1. Clarify decision-making roles and processes within the Libraries and Press in support of better transparency, more effective delegation, and greater participation and collaboration both within and across departments.
2. Build a culture and structures that emphasize and reward experimentation, reflective practices and mindfulness.
3. Emphasize equity, diversity and inclusion in hiring and retention at all levels of the organization, so that we become, over time, more reflective of the diversity of the communities that we serve.
External Priorities
1. Optimize the library experience in support of learning success, scholarly excellence and community engagement.
This will include, but not be limited to: maximizing the capacity of our facilities for learning and work; ensuring that our spaces are safe and inclusive; removing barriers to access our resources and the resources of OSU; and co-creating learning spaces with our users.
2. Strengthen equity, diversity and inclusion in our organization, on campus, in the community and in our professional communities.
This will include, but not be limited to: focusing our resources, expertise and knowledge in support of larger OSU efforts to address these issues; identifying communities underserved by OSU Libraries and providing the resources necessary to improve their access and use; continuing to build collections that represent diverse experiences and complicated issues; and identifying missing voices in all of our collections and developing ways to address that.
3. Develop, demonstrate and support best practices for data management, preservation, accessibility and privacy across campus.
This will include, but not be limited to: advocating for privacy in student data policies; collaborating with researchers on developing best practices for data management throughout the research life-cycle for open data; and the creation and preservation of digital objects within OSULP.
4. Pursue solutions that will support publishing, distribution and collection models and relationships that are flexible, affordable, accessible and sustainable for users and creators.
This will include, but not be limited to: advocating for open when it makes sense, and excellence and affordability always; and guiding our communities through the complex systems of publishing and distribution.
5. Use direct and indirect strategies to help make college more affordable for undergraduate and graduate students.
This will include, but not be limited to: creatively building collections to give our communities access to the resources that they need; working with campus partners to connect learners to these and other campus resources; identifying ways to reduce or eliminate fees and fines; identifying, creating and sharing low- and no-cost alternatives to course materials; and wherever possible, sharing and supporting open tools with an eye to how learners will access information after they leave Oregon State.