Miami University Libraries

Strategic Plan

Introduction

As the welook to the next decade we are sure that significant changes await the Miami University Libraries, as do many unknowns: the impact of the changing economy on funding, increasing globalization, the opportunities of Open Access (OA) development, the proliferation of digital repositories, the advance of cloud computing, the decline of privacy—the ways in which all these factors will impact our collections, services and facilities remains to be seen.

Both on campus and in the OhioLINK consortium, the Miami University Libraries have integrated technological advances into library services. While the mission of higher education has remained constant, pedagogy, the provision of information, and support for our students and facultyand the range of desirable educational outcomes have been changed.

This strategic plan sets forth the most essential goals of the Miami University Libraries so that, even in the challenging environment facing Miami University and academia in general, we can continue to fulfill our mission of helping students and faculty best take advantage of the evolving landscape of information resources. In support of our mission to the University, we will continue to staff the Libraries with dedicated, enthusiastic and energetic personnel, and make the best possible use of limited financial resources in order to:

  • Provide access to information resources that support teaching and research at Miami;
  • Offer instruction and research support enabling students, faculty and staff to effectively navigate them;
  • Make available facilities and technologythat support research, study, and group interactions;
  • Raise awareness of scholarly communications issues so that faculty can most broadly and effectively disseminate their work.

Access to Information

The Miami University Libraries provide access to information in books, journals, research databases, and a variety of other formats. These resources are the building blocks of curricular support, research and scholarship. While many of these resources are selected locally, the Libraries also actively engage in consortial collaborations, such as OhioLINK and OhioNet, in order to make many more resources available to the Miami community.

Increasingly, many of these resources are available online, giving our users the convenience of accessing information from their offices, residence hall rooms, apartments, or homes. However, theincreasing access to online resources has not mitigated fiscal challenges libraries face, includingthe continuingannual inflation increases for journals. In addition, online versions of journals and books present additional financial challenges that do not exist in their print counterparts, such as ongoing payments for e-book content, or surcharges based on the number of users permitted to simultaneously access a database. There are also additional challenges for user training.
The Libraries are committed to identifying cost effective strategies to provide resources in the appropriate formats to meet the curricular and research needs of Miami's students and faculty through a combination of traditional access (purchased books and journals) and newer models (e.g., e-books and on-demand acquisitions).

Current Status of Access to Information:

  • The Libraries currently provide our students and faculty with more than 3 million books, almost 90,000 journals, and access to 175 databases. Departments undergoing review by external agencies routinely include information about resources relevant to their discipline(s) to indicate the strength of support the University provides.
  • Miami’s students and faculty,can place unmediated requests for any of the 8 million unique titles held by OhioLINK if it is not currently available at Miami.
  • The Libraries provide access to course materials for the top 25 courses through the Textbook Initiative.
  • Embedding curricular resources at our users' point of need (rather than, or in addition to the Libraries' web site/catalog), has increased awareness and usage of unique items housed by the Libraries. For example, images and metadata about unique items housed in the Libraries Special Collections on Flickr received far more usage than similar information placed in Digital Collections.
  • Collection growth policies that consider usage statistics to ensure that the most heavily used resources are available on demand in campus libraries.
  • The Libraries provide access to video in many formats, including DVD and streaming videos for individual or classroom use, and a Video on Demand service that provides online access to students who are assigned to view videos for their class.
  • The Libraries have been a Federal Depository Library for 100 concurrent years and are also a depository for the European Union, the United Nations, and Ohio.
  • Havighurst Special Collections and two archives facilities house unique and historical collections.Digitization of some of these unique resources makes them available online. These include historical Miami University documents and complete runs of the Miami Student and Western Roundup.
  • Maintaining the Southwest Ohio Regional Depository (SWORD), a remote storage facility operated by Miami for four state affiliated institutions and housing more than 2 million volumes, enables the Libraries to retainand provide access to less-frequently used materials.
  • The Libraries staff an efficient and effective Technical Services department, which receives, processes, describes and maintains each item in the library's collection.

Observations/Challenges related to Access to Information:

  • The collection development process has been complicated by the growth in the rate of scholarship and inflation in prices, combined with constrained budgets.
  • Libraries have shifted from collecting books and journals which are housed locally to providing access to electronic materials and obtaining materials delivered from offsite.
  • Restructuring currently taking place at OhioLINK may jeopardize its ability to offer cost-effective subscriptions and timely access to databases, journals and other electronic content that meet the needs of Miami and other Universities.
  • New courses and curricula are often created without fully investigating and understanding the impact of these programs on the library's collections and subscriptions.
  • Electronic books lack standards in their business models, distribution, cataloging, and processing workflow, and therefore present additional challenges to cataloging, discovery, and access. Providing electronic books are a challenge to users with a variety of formats, readers, and capabilities. Until consistent standards are implemented, readers will not fully embrace electronic substitutes for print material.
  • OhioLINK has successfully acquired several large collections of electronic books from publishers including Oxford University Press and Springer, and is moving forward with additional publishers; however, their emphasis has been on purchasing content rather than providing records for access, resulting in large electronic book collections that are not easily located through the catalog.
  • Users have incorrect assumptions about online information, including the assumption that all online information is free, or that Google indexes everything online.

Library Strategies for the Coming Decade:

  • Acquire digital rather than physical collections wherever possible and appropriate.The Libraries will re-evaluate collection development policies (last revised almost a decade ago) to emphasize acquiring digital access, rather than physical copies, whenever feasible.
  • Explore opportunities for cooperative collection development.Seek out consortial and collaborative agreements that provide greater access to materials that support research and scholarship at Miami University while maintaining or reducing costs. This includes investigating state-wide purchasing strategies for electronic and print materials.
  • Explore alternative, more flexible models for collection development.Createnew models of supporting academic departments and subject collections. For example, many reference books are now being offered as electronic books and require a subscription as opposed to a one-time purchase.
  • Encourage academic units which wish to offer new curricula and courses to seek funds that will support such expansion with a correlating investment in library collections. The existing budget for collections is currently taxed by an inflation rate which outstrips increases which can be borne by the University. Divisions should calculate and be prepared to defray the costs of building collections in new areas of scholarship as they propose new majors and programs of study.
  • Encourage faculty to embed library resources into high-traffic, non-library locations.To provide efficient access to resources, the Libraries need to explore additionalways to make resources available where users will encounter them, particularly by seeking the ability to place course and department/program- specific materials available to students and faculty on the University’s portal, myMiami.
  • Develop a strategy to maximize limited storage space. With SWORD rapidly running out of space, we must address the issue of how to handle the end of the life cycle for books and journals. Given duplication of holdings among other Ohio libraries, we must create a model that preserves statewide access to rarely used titles, but frees individual libraries from each retaining duplicate copies.
  • Continue to assess our resources and services through qualitative and quantitative methods.In this new fiscal environment, it is critical to assess facilities and services in terms of user success and satisfaction. Usability testing of new interfaces for the catalog and e-resources will ensure that they address the needs of our students and faculty.

Instruction and Research Support

The Miami University Libraries provide research support through instructional programming to Miami’s students and faculty to continuously develop competencies to work with a constantly shifting i. In addition, the Libraries seek to identify ways to most efficiently deliver assistance through our on-demand reference service available online and in our library facilities and by appointment for more complex questions.

The Miami University Libraries have a goal of developing intuitive finding aids to guide students and faculty to the curricular research resources needed. However, it is important to note that our collection of electronic research tools, journals, and books are provided by many different providers, and therefore come with a variety of interfaces and search capabilities beyond our control. Although many students and faculty are comfortable operating in an online environment, this comfort does not necessarily translate into skills needed to identify the best search tools and strategies to seek out research resources, nor does it necessarily entail the recognition of the value of a variety of resource formats may have to their research and the ability to locate these resources.To effectively navigate a constantly evolving collection of information resources, even students who are proficient with existing research tools need instruction and research support to continuously refine and redevelop their competencies.

Current Status of Instruction and Research Support

  • Library service points answer more than 75,000 reference questions annually.
  • Librarians provide more than 650 presentationson research and information management skills annually.
  • Library facilities support a variety of summer programs and workshops that target current or prospective students, including the Minority Leadership Program, Summer Scholars, and Egypt Camp.
  • Approximately 2,500students each year participate in Miami eScholar, an introduction to research and academic integrity targeted at first year and incoming Miami students.
  • Approximately 50% of new faculty, 10% of new graduate students, and a large segment of International Students attend voluntary Library orientation sessions.
  • The Libraries sponsor or co-sponsor continuing education opportunities for faculty, including the Learning Technologies Summer Institute, a summer program co-sponsored with IT Services and the Provost’s office which assists faculty in the integration of technology into the curriculum, several learning communities led by librarians for CELTUA.
  • In addition, the Libraries offer Technology and Information Management (TIM) workshops, which offer Miami's students, faculty and staff the opportunity to explore technology for managing and creating digital information.
  • Subject specialist librarians and the Libraries' Data Task Force routinely assist faculty to provide information about research support and services in support of grant proposals and departmental accreditation.

Observations/Challenges related to Instruction and Research Support

  • The University currently lacks an infrastructure for introducing all incoming students, regardless of major or prospective major, to basic research competencies. Furthermore, current curriculum changes appear likely to prevent this from occurring in the near future.
  • Librarians teach an average of 650 instruction sessions and orientation sessions per year. While these are favorably reviewed, they reach only a small percentage of the University population.
  • The Libraries must continually adapt to support all the learning modalities (mobile, social, digital, etc), of today’s student.
  • While considerable progress is being made in the area of classroom-integrated instruction, the Libraries’ primary venue for instruction continues to be of the one-time sessions, with limited or no opportunities for interaction or follow-up collaboration with students. The challenge is to alert faculty that information literacy skills are most fully achieved in the context of a research assignment, and with multiple opportunities for interaction with librarians, faculty, and students.
  • Even more essential than learning specific tasks and resources is that all members of the University community become accustomed to the pattern of continuously redeveloping their abilities and re-thinking how they search for information.
  • The Libraries need topromote subject specialist librarians to Miami’s faculty, so that they can draw on their breadth of subject knowledge and instruction experience, which can be valuable resources in developing assignments and partnering with students throughout their research process.

Library Strategies for the Coming Decade (Instruction and Research Support):

  • Engage students in the research process throughout their academic careers. Becoming fluent in the competencies needed to seek, identify, and use research resources is not a one-time process, but one that takes place over time. However, a recent National Survey of Student Engagement, asurvey of student life, identified such skills as an area in which students reported the least amount of growth during their time at Miami. By partnering with faculty, the Libraries’ subject specialist librarians need to identify ways to infuse each level of the curriculum with competencies appropriate to it to support the “Student as Scholar” model of development.
  • Connect with students at their point of need. Providing more instructional opportunities for students at their point of need will assist in fostering learning at times when librarians are not available, and provide for greater efficiencies in instructional planning. In addition to helping students to expand and apply their research competencies, point-of-need instruction such as podcasts and video-based instruction also maximize the time of librarians.
  • Delivering assistance and instruction to users of handheld devices. Knowing how widely used mobile devices have become, it is important for the Libraries to have services and resources accessible from handheld devices so students can contact librarians with their research questions and access materials from wherever they are.
  • Assist faculty in the development of research assignments. Encourage collaboration between librarian subject specialists and teaching faculty in order to develop assignments which most effectively exploit the Libraries’ resources and services.
  • Provide venues for faculty to further explore information literacy. Understanding the nature of information literacy (and how to foster it in the classroom) is important for faculty members to know, and the Libraries need to make opportunities (e.g., Faculty Learning Communities) available for faculty to grow in this area.
  • Utilize assessment tools to gain more information about the quality of instruction provided. Introducing an instructional assessment plan will help the Libraries better understand where strengths (and weakness) occur within our instruction plan. The plan would additionally help instructors to better understand their own quality of teaching.
  • Strengthening of Librarian research skills. By broadening staff development and training opportunities, we can better assist students and faculty in improving their research productivity and achieving learning outcomes.[[Is this too internally focused?]]

Library Facilities

The Miami University Libraries currently operate four libraries, as well as archives for Miami University and the former Western College for Women. Formal and informal feedback gathered by the Libraries stresses the importance students and faculty place on our facilities as a place to study, engage in collaborative research, seek out research resources, and access services that support the process of research. In recent years, this has led to the Howe Writing Center establishing a presence near our Information Desk in King Library, and to services such as the development of thePower Inn, which provides a place to re-charge laptops.

The Libraries as physical spaces play an important role in the University’s curriculum as it continues to place more emphasis on peer collaboration in assignments. For example, the Libraries have 57 group study rooms that students can use for collaborative work. King group study rooms were checked out over 12,000 times during Fall Semester, 2009. All of these rooms are equipped with whiteboards to foster brainstorming, while some have projectors or flat screen displays that allow for group work with a laptop. In addition to the formal study rooms, there are many informal areas in the library which facilitate group work.

The Libraries are currently in the early stages of construction on a new library facility, the Business, Engineering, Science and Technology (BEST) Library, which will support the research and curricular needs in the physical and life sciences, engineering, business and psychology programs at Miami. This new facility is being designed from the ground up to support group collaboration, with both formal and informal work spaces. Our remaining facilities also provide study spaces, group work/study areas, and an instruction room in the Wertz Art/Architecture Library which is available for student use when not hosting instructional sessions.