The Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries
Strategic Directions 2007 – 2011

Strategic Directions and Objectives approved by CUWL September 14,2007
Action items added for October 2007 CUWL meeting
Revised/updated for January 2008 CUWL meeting
Will be updated after April 2008 CUWL meeting

One System, One Library

Now is the time to reinvest in UWS Libraries. The libraries have employed the concept of One System, One Library to maintain and improve collections and achieve efficient services in an environment of flat or reduced budgets and rapidly increasing costs. It has been ten years since the libraries have received an increase of state funding. Additional funding is critical to fully implement the vision of building a more robust One System, One Library that provides world-class library services to students, faculty, staff and Wisconsin residents.

Vision: The University of Wisconsin System (UWS) libraries will advance successful teaching, learning and research through building a robust One System, One Library.

Strategic Direction 1: Integrate Information and Services into Learning Environments.

Objective 1: Increase the Shared Electronic Collection (SEC) to meet the scholarly and educational needs of all UW faculty and students.

• Action Item 1 (Collections): Determine the budget needs for a comprehensive Shared Electronic Collection budget if access to all resources licensed for the Madison campus were expanded to the entire UW System.

Work is proceeding on determining the cost of extending access systemwide for major STM publishers’ journals and selective core resources in several disciplines currently licensed for the Madison campus. These figures will be the basis for estimating the larger, comprehensive cost for the budget exercise. January 2008
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• Action Item 2 (Collections): Develop recommendations on how special funding allocated to the comprehensive campuses for commercial document delivery in support of faculty research needs should be distributed and which document services should be used. Added January 2008?

The recommendations of the working group, appointed in December, will be presented at the Jan. 2008 CUWL meeting.

Objective 2: Maximize the success of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.

• Action Item 1 (DICC): Develop a comprehensive digital plan to be delivered to CUWL in October 2008.

Objective 3: Determine the role of the institutional repository.

• Action Item 1 (DICC): Develop a multi-part strategy for the enhancement of the MINDS@UW program to be delivered to CUWL, October 2008.

Objective 4: Improve on- and off-campus access and simplify use of all resources.

• Action Item 1 (DICC): Develop best practices guidelines for the digitization and preservation of “off-line” digital content to be delivered to CUWL in April 2008.

Deferred until October 2008

• Action Item 2 (TECH): Assist campuses with D2L/Library Integration Taskforce recommendations (putting more library resources into D2L/Learn@UW).
• Action Item 3 (USER): Review distance education problems accessing library resources and work with other units to remove obstacles.
• Action Item 4 (USER): Document user service tools, resources, and methods currently employed by UW campuses and facilitate the sharing and use of these tools, resources, and methods across the UW System. The open source reference statistics software developed at UW-Madison (PS Stats) is one example. The use of student response systems (clickers) at a few of our campuses is another example.
• Action Item 5 (USER): Explore the use of Web 2.0 tools in the provision of user services.
• Action Item 6 (USER): Create a wiki for all CUWL Coordinating Committees to share information, tools, resources and teaching materials. Updated January 2008
• Action Item 7 (USER): Create Distance Services Subgroup including librarians from each campus to discuss ongoing distance services issues. Added January 2008

Objective 5: Investigate new approaches to the traditional integrated library system.

• Action Item 1 (TECH): Review options for a new OPAC; keep apprised of new products like WorldCat Local, Primo, and Evergreen.
• Action Item 2: (USER): Identify the desired/required functionality of our next generation OPAC – on hold pending the outcome of UW Madison’s Resource Discovery Exploratory Task Force. Responsibility may be transferred to TECH CC. Updated January 2008

Strategic Direction 2: Build partnerships for learning and scholarship.

Objective 1: Enhance alliances and communication with senior campus administrators, faculty, students, public policy makers, and the K – 12 community.

• Action Item 1 (Budget/Din): Create and build support for a DIN that will improve the abilities of UW Libraries to meet the educational and research needs of students and faculty. Added January 2008

Objective 2: Incorporate information literacy skills into campus core competencies.

• Action Item 1 (User): Explore information literacy/library instruction assessment tools and make a recommendation.

Objective 3: Promote campus responsibility for records management.

Objective 4: Promote change in alternative scholarly communication, public access publishing and author’s rights.

Objective 5: Pursue the development of a shared electronic collection that would include institutions or organizations beyond UWS.

Objective 6: Develop a comprehensive program for cooperative collection development across UW System.

• Action Item 1 (Collections): Conduct a “quick bid” for selecting commercial software so that UW libraries can evaluate their collections individually as well as consortially with respect to the strengths, weaknesses, usage levels and overlap of holdings.

Quick bid process was completed in late 2007 with the awarding of the contract to Library Dynamics. Training in the use of the Library Dynamics software to evaluate collection strengths, usage, overlap of holdings, and other parameters of library-specific or consortial interest will begin during the first quarter of 2008. Added January 2008.

• Action Item 2 (Collections): Evaluation of Blackwell as CUWL’s primary domestic book vendor
• Prepare a report in early 2008 showing the distribution of each campus’ domestic monograph expenditures for the first six months of FY08.

Report on July-Dec. 2007 monograph expenditures will be presented at the Jan. 2008 CUWL meeting.

• Evaluate Blackwell’s performance for the first year of the contract by requesting the Book Procurement Working Group, which had prepared the 2006 RFP, to identify the critical service specifications. The impact of the primary vendor model on collection development purchases will be also be evaluated.

Strategic Direction 3: Embrace innovation in services and operations.

Objective 1: Develop a culture of assessment by collecting library data that can be compared across institutions, is relevant to current library services, and is outcomes based.

• Action Item 1 (DICC): Develop user focused assessment and research and development program for the UWDC. First report on progress on progress to be delivered to CUWL in July 2008.
• Action Item 2 (Tech): Improve consistency across campuses of the MetaLib implementation; review recommendations for consistency of SFX and MetaLib variables and features – on hold until MetaLib assessment is completed. Added January 2008
• Action Item 3 (USER): Perform an assessment of SFX/MetaLib.
• Action Item 4 (USER): Investigate and recommend ways to assess user response to MetaLIb as a useful research tool. Added January 2008
• Action Item 5 (Collections/TECH): Review and analyze the effectiveness of Universal Borrowing and further develop resource-sharing policies with the advice of appropriate constituencies. Added January 2008.

Objective 2: Adopt best business practices.

• Action Item 1: (TECH): Review Voyager invoicing and licenses to determine if there would be significant savings by renegotiating the contract.
• Action Item 2: (TECH/Collections): Discuss a needs assessment for an electronic resources management (ERM) system, such as Verde. Updated January 2008
• Action Item 3 (Collections): Review current methods by which library collections are assessed for insurance purposes and make recommendations, if necessary, for reducing variations in assessment methods.

Objective 3: Build and utilize diversity of staff and expertise across System.

• Action Item 1 (TECH): Assist smaller campuses with automation needs - investigate centralization of more functions; work to offer more training.
• Action Item 2 (TECH): Create a UW functional contacts list.
• Action Item 3 (User): Investigate new models of reference services while focusing on services for remote users, the role of students and paraprofessionals in providing reference services (staffing issues), the integration of reference services with other academic support services, training issues, assessment issues, and the future of the reference desk.

Objective 4: Focus on most pressing needs by realigning priorities and budgets.

Objective 5: Work to secure funding to build a preservation facility.

• Action Item 1 (Collections): Survey each campus’ space needs for future planning and in order to strengthen the case for a System wide preservation facility.

Objective 6: Re-purpose library spaces to meet the needs of innovative learning.