Strategic Directions and Goals

Within each strategic direction, the Libraries already have areas of success and expertise. This plan seeks to build on these strengths that have been developed and nurtured by library employees over time.  

Strategic Direction: Student Flourishing and Success   

We enable student flourishing and success by helping students develop critical thinking and information fluency skills to be successful academically and prepare them for a life of learning.   

 Goals:   

  • Enrich students' academic experience by partnering with faculty to create high-impact learning, including experiential learning opportunities.  
  • Enhance student success by developing and assessing instruction and cocurricular workshops to align with student and faculty needs.    

Strategic Direction: Research, Scholarship, and Discovery  

We enhance research and scholarship through strategic collection development and research expertise. We provide leadership in acquiring, curating, sharing, and preserving research outputs and scholarship in all formats.  We provide expertise and personalized support for scholars throughout the research lifecycle.   

Goals:   

  • Build and enhance access to curated and diverse collections aligned with research and teaching while mitigating harmful language and norms with inclusive and accessible practices that respect the creators of the works and their communities. 
  • Build and preserve unique, openly available digital collections and coordinate campus-wide awareness of shifts toward open scholarship and open science among Emory’s research community.  
  • Meet evolving researcher and student needs and imperatives by assessing and refining services by librarians, subject matter experts, and specialists.  

Strategic Direction: Library Spaces  

We provide academically focused, welcoming, and user-centered spaces and learning environments that promote research, learning, collaboration, and reflection. Our spaces, both physical and virtual, enable us to meet user needs for exploration and growth.  

Goals:   

  • Embrace universal design1principles to enable flexible, inclusive, and accessible user spaces that contribute to the Emory community’s overall success and student well-being.  
  • Envision and promote physical and online points of engagement that foster belonging and break down barriers to accessing services and collections, advocating for changes by the University when appropriate.  

Strategic Direction: Commitment to Our People   

We commit to our people by celebrating, providing career pathways for, and inspiring growth and development for our Libraries’ team members who are all vital to our success. We commit to building an equitable library organization that systematically embraces and welcomes diversity.  

Goals:   

  • Attract, recruit, hire, promote and retain more diverse talent.  
  • Foster a culture of continuous learning and include all employees in opportunities to grow skills needed in a diverse, ever-changing library workplace.  
  • Increase cultural competency and build awareness of inclusion and belonging throughout the workforce.   

Strategic Direction: Connections and Communications   

As part of a university with the mission to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity, we raise awareness of the resources available to all, foster partnerships with campus stakeholders, and create meaningful connections with our visitors and the community.    

Goals:

  • Develop strategic community partnerships and foster relationships with key community stakeholders.  
  • Develop and implement a strategic communication and outreach approach for the Emory community to raise awareness of, and engagement with, library services, resources, expertise, and our rich collections.  

1 Universal design is the design of buildings, products, or environments to make them accessible to people, regardless of age, disability, or other factors (see Wikipedia and Emory’s DAS for more information).