Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals
Mission
University Libraries equip knowledge seekers to use information to shape their professions, enhance their communities, and create a more equitable society.
Vision
Anchored in the University’s educational mission and commitment to transformative equity, the University Libraries advance a bold vision of equitable access, empowered learning, and human-centered spaces.
Values
- Learner-centered: This value in action:
- We center learning and learner needs in our services, spaces, and all that we do by proactively asking: “How does this impact our users?”
- We create and maintain conditions which enable entrepreneurial culture, curiosity, inquiry, and continuous learning.
- Equity: This value in action:
- We actively work to reduce barriers to library services and information by critically examining systems, structures, and processes.
- We invite many voices and perspectives to ensure diverse representation in library decisions and collections.
- Collaboration: This value in action:
- We recognize the strengths of individuals and the importance of many perspectives.
- We strategically collaborate with departments, campus groups, and the greater profession to develop thoughtful solutions and reduce barriers to student learning.
- Care: This value in action:
- We approach each other with respect, empathy, and curiosity, and we recognize the necessity of hard conversations.
- We prioritize what we do and how we do it while we take care of ourselves and each other.
- Integrity: This value in action:
- We work to promote transparency in our processes and decisions.
- We uphold the principles of academic freedom, the exchange of ideas, and the ethical uses of information and data.
- We are leaders in advancing open knowledge as a public good.
Pillars
These pillars provide the foundation for our priorities and goals and provide a longer term grounding for the strategic work that follows.
- Partner to integrate expertise: We use our unique knowledge, skills, and expertise as information professionals to facilitate empowered learning throughout the student journey. We collaborate to advance the scholarly efforts of faculty. We advance learning at strategic points in courses and beyond, working within existing structures, partnerships, and services while continuing to innovate.
- Advance access: We deliberately invest our labor, expertise, and capital in knowledge infrastructures, open access initiatives, and open educational resources. Recognized as a leader on campus, we ensure our investments in infrastructures and resources serve everyone.
- Dismantle barriers: We critically engage with our systems, spaces, and services to advance equity and cultivate a sense of belonging within all library spaces. We will become an actively anti-racist, human-centered, accessible organization for our users.
- Invest in People: We believe the foundation of the library is its people. We will continue to grow as an equity-minded and human-centered workplace. We use participatory practices throughout the organization to create an environment for our student colleagues, faculty, and staff to excel.
Priorities
These priorities will guide the next 5 years of the Libraries work. They activate the pillars towards the achievement of the vision:
- Leverage expertise and spaces to enhance learning and increase student belonging. The Libraries use specialized skill sets and spaces to improve students’ overall experience at GVSU, impact student success, and to foster a sense of belonging among all students. The Libraries remain adaptable to a changing campus, and different modalities of learning to empower student learning.
- Advance access to resources through creative and sustainable practices. The Libraries are committed to expanding access to information resources through advocacy, education, adoption, and implementation of open access publishing, open educational resources, and use of our existing collections to provide students course materials, when possible, with no additional personal cost.
- Create learning opportunities rooted in inclusive teaching practices. The Library builds and maintains a variety of learning pathways to meet the needs of learners where they are and where they’ll go next. We recognize learning occurs both in connection with classroom experiences and serendipitously. The Libraries’ design philosophies are rooted in inclusive teaching principles, such as Universal Design for Learning and inclusive pedagogies, and are developed with accessibility in mind and a learner-centered approach.
- Cultivate an engaged workforce. The success of the Libraries ultimately depends on the people doing the work of creating and maintaining the learning environment. The Libraries will sustain a supported learning environment for its employees through organizational and individual skills development
Goals
These goals will direct the Libraries work for the next 1-2 years:
- Strategic Goal 1: Implement inclusive customer service expectations across the Libraries. Map with information literacy to advance empowered learning.
- Strategic Goal 2: Articulate library support benchmark, needed infrastructure, and Libraries-wide roadmap of OA/OER duties to scale out work.
- Strategic Goal 3: Reimagine Steelcase Library to deliver on the Libraries’ mission of cultivating student success and user belonging for GVSU students.
- Strategic Goal 4: To cultivate an engaged workforce engage with the university core competency, “Acts with Integrity.” Familiarize knowledge and integrate new campus competencies into our work.
For questions about the accessibility and readability of this page, please contact Jon Jeffryes, Associate Dean for Curriculum, Research, and User Services.
