COLD Strategic Plan

The CSU Libraries Strategic Plan

Final Approved 11/30/17

Vision

The CSU Libraries are internationally-recognized for their essential contributions to enriching the learning environment, informing and educating communities, and transforming knowledge and scholarship by connecting people and ideas.

Mission

The CSU Libraries collaborate, innovate, and leverage opportunities to advance learning, discovery, knowledge creation, and the public good through the provision of equitable services, expertise, and information resources.

Statement on Diversity and Social Justice

The CSU Libraries collectively advocate for social justice and inclusive excellence. We are dedicated to promoting and celebrating the diversity within our libraries and campuses by collaborating to create open and accessible collections, services, physical spaces, and hiring practices in support of an engaged and educated community.

Guiding Principles

The purpose of this strategic plan is to provide a roadmap for shared initiatives and decision-making across the libraries of the twenty-three CSU campuses. It is powerful--both symbolically and fiscally--when this large number of libraries advocate for collective action. However, because it is not always possible for a shared solution to meet the needs of all CSU Libraries, it is acknowledged that finding balance between a library’s responsibility to its campus mission and the CSU Libraries collective is influenced by a variety of factors and will vary by initiative. As such, the following values guide the collective action of the CSU Libraries:

• The centrality of libraries to information literacy, critical thinking, and student success;
• The importance of open and equitable access to information;
• The responsibility of community engagement, especially in the preservation of history;
• A culture of communication, honesty, respect, and trust;
• The desire to advance creative thinking and infrastructure necessary for innovation;
• A practice of continuous improvement; and
• Intellectual freedom and user data privacy as bedrock principles.

Strategic Priorities

1. Student Learning and Success

In support of student success and continuous improvement, CSU Libraries advance student learning by assessing student information literacy competencies, evaluating library services, aligning student needs with their experience in the library, and leveraging shared analytics to make evidence-based decisions for student benefit and improvement. To further accomplish this, the CSU Libraries will:

• Share knowledge to build bridges between strategies and tactics employed by individual campuses in support of Graduation Initiative 2025;
• Review current and cutting-edge research methodologies to identify the most promising approaches;
• Demonstrate how information literacy instruction can positively impact student learning and success and campus accreditation goals in order to develop CSU best practices;
• Collaborate across libraries and with campus institutional research offices to build models to triangulate library data with institutional, programmatic, and course data; and
• Communicate the impact of the CSU Libraries’ services, spaces, collections, and information literacy activities on student success to CSU stakeholders.

2. Shared Collections

In support of existing and emerging research and teaching activities, the CSU Libraries facilitate discovery, delivery, and preservation of information resources and strive to acquire, preserve, and provide equitable access to shared information resources for all students and faculty regardless of campus. To further accomplish this, the CSU Libraries will:

• Negotiate shared content rights when possible in order to provide expanded access to our students and faculty, while maximizing buying power and reducing duplicative costs;
• Network to share information resources in print and digital formats as seamlessly and porously as possible across campuses;
• Select, acquire, catalog, and preserve materials collaboratively;
• Capitalize on storage efficiencies;
• Collaboratively develop a model for a CSU-wide, long-term, shared print collection; and
• Advocate for central budgetary support in order to sustain and grow core collections.

3. Infrastructure for Innovation

In support of innovation, the CSU Libraries leverage the ability of the collective to  optimize efficiencies and build new capacities in support of the research and learning needs of CSU students, faculty, and staff. CSU Libraries collaboratively advance shared platforms for data analysis, preservation, digitization, discovery, and information sharing. To further accomplish this, the CSU Libraries will:

• Maintain and improve upon a unified library services platform and resource sharing network;
• Purchase, develop, and implement relevant technologies at scale to serve all twenty-four libraries;
• Share skills and expertise across libraries and emphasize technical training and continuing professional development for library faculty and staff;
• Share digital learning objects, scripts, or applications that facilitate the discovery and delivery of library resources; and
• Highlight CSU Library innovations and workflows via national and local conferences and publications.

4. Scholarly Communications and Openness

In support of open access and the economic justice inherent in supporting faculty and students’ unfettered access to research and course materials, the CSU Libraries work collaboratively to redefine existing models of scholarly communication, create shared infrastructure for hosting open information, and educate our communities about these and related issues. To further accomplish this the CSU Libraries will:

• Support publishing models that prioritize flexibility and open access in our collections decisions;  
• Promote open access publishing with CSU faculty and collaborate to highlight the scholarly, creative, and unique collections produced by the CSU community;
• Develop ScholarWorks as a CSU-wide option for highlighting and publishing research, scholarship, and creative works produced by the CSU system;
• Lead efforts to collaborate with faculty to transition course materials to open education resources;
• Commit to open source applications, when feasible;
• Support open data standards; and
• Ensure a library workforce with the skills to engage in these emerging scholarly communications conversations.

Action items