Minutes of May 19, 2005 Meeting

Present:: Ka-Neng Au, Ron Becker, Jeanne Boyle, Gary Golden, Judith Grassle, Rhonda Marker, Roger Smith, and Myoung Wilson

Ron Becker and Jeanne Boyle distributed the five strategic goals based on those of the University. After a full discussion with all attendees participating, the draft document was revised and now reads:

Academic Excellence

Strategic Goal: Improve the quality of scholarly resources and information services that support the advancement of academic excellence at Rutgers.

Acquire more full text online resources
Build up the book collection
Allocate the collections budget strategically to support new areas of academic and research excellence
Develop and provide access to collections in specialized areas that other institutions will want to borrow
Improve collaboration with UMDNJ and NJIT
Develop the reciprocal partnerships that provide Rutgers faculty and students access to collections outside the university
Increase availability of information literacy materials and programs
Create services that connect librarians and students using new and emerging modes of communication and teaching, i.e., text messaging, student portals, learning management systems
Adopt or develop tools that provide easy, seamless, reliable, and convenient access to both online and traditional scholarly resources, wherever they are located
Focus the development of digital resources on the Libraries' collections and university scholarship.
Increase the diversity of the Libraries' workforce
Advocate for university and faculty participation in the open access movement and its impact on the Libraries
Enhance the roles of departmental liaisons

Students and Campuses

Strategic Goal: Enhance the effectiveness of library services for students and the development of library facilities as learning spaces.

Enhance the physical library environment so that all libraries are welcoming and comfortable
Provide increased/better technology and equipment
Organize library collections to respond better to our constituencies, to support efficient delivery services and reciprocal borrowing opportunities, and to recoup space for new uses and new collections
Improve library safety and security.

Service and Constituency Relations

Strategic Goal: Improve awareness of the resources, services, and support available to all of the Libraries' constituencies.

Develop and implement a marketing and communications plan for university and statewide constituencies
Develop collaborative relationships with new university programs and offices
Participate and take a leadership role in collaborative statewide and regional initiatives and further develop tools to share resources

Resources for Rutgers

Strategic Goal: Increase the Libraries' resources to the levels of peer AAU public universities and manage those resources more strategically and efficiently.

Promote increased budget allocations that will bring the Libraries' resources to the level of peer institutions
Acquire budget resources to support new areas of academic and research excellence
Increase support for multilingual information that meets the curricular and research needs of the university and the rich diversity of the State of New Jersey
Participate in all phases of the next capital campaign
Partner with Office for Information Technology (OIT), Center for Advancement of Teaching (CAT), and other relevant university support agencies in ways that define roles and responsibilities clearly so that there is no duplication of effort
Continue the integrated allocation of resources, and implement a more strategic approach

Leadership and Administration

Strategic Goal: Continue to develop an organization and the human resources to achieve the Libraries' strategic goals.

Invest in staff development and recognition and support organizational development, including the areas of managing people and resources
Recruit and redeploy existing personnel to support new areas of emphasis and excellence
Recruit personnel who are grounded in digital library trends and have strong technological qualifications
Investigate alternate career tracks and new criteria for advancement for librarians, based on the changing nature of academic librarianship

The document will be further refined under the Resources for Rutgers category after Ron Becker meets with Julia Zapcic for advice. Also, Rhonda Marker will rewrite the bullets under Service and Constituency Relations. In addition, Ron Becker and Jeanne Boyle will be meeting with Marianne Gaunt on May 20th to receive her suggestions. The next step will be to write introductions to each section and fuller statements for the bullets. Examples of fuller statements in Academic Excellence include under Focus the development of digital resources, a sentence or two with the sentiment including a reorientation of our efforts so that digital resource development is focused on university scholarship and not on external market forces or other outside influences. Under Students and Campuses, the notion of centralized collections and de-centralized services will be introduced.

Rhonda Marker distributed a document containing five elements to include in the strategic plan:

Current environment
Outlook
Our response (the strategic goal)
The vision
The Plan (what we would do)

Current environment summarizes the major factors that influence our decisions. This is based on all the surveying and information gathering we have been doing.

Outlook summarizes the trends that influence our decisions gleaned mostly from articles and presentations.

Our response states our goal, and aligns it with the University's strategic goals.

The vision is an articulation of the underlying approach we have to meeting the strategic goal. It is a unifying principle that should be able to guide decision-making even in the face of an unforeseen circumstance.

The plan puts "meat on the bones". It is a framework that leads directly to action, which states what we are likely to do to achieve our goal.

Rhonda provided an example of the process for the Academic Excellence section.

Ron Becker announced that the Steering Committee will be hosting a strategic planning forum for all RUL personnel in mid to late June and will try to schedule a date where all or nearly all members will be able to attend.

The next meeting will be held on Thursday, June 9, 2005 in the 3rd floor conference room in the Alexander Library and will be teleconferenced if needed to the Robeson and Dana Libraries.