OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The staff of the Brown University Library, as members of an intellectual community, embrace the core values of the academy, of research and scholarship, and of librarianship, as they have developed over the centuries and continue to thrive into the 21st Century. We are engaged in the life of the mind and committed to education, to academic freedom, to open communication, and to intellectual integrity.

We value cultural and historical artifacts and information resources, most especially the book. We are committed to collecting bibliographic resources in many forms and formats, to achieving order among them, and to an altruistic sense of stewardship for them. We are also committed to excellence of service for our users.

While we continue to be guided by these traditional principles, we build upon them by espousing some additional values which we hope will serve us well as we enter the 21st Century. We embrace the dynamism of the personal computer and networked communications and the exponentially expanding connectivity and access to global information resources. We value quality, accuracy and integrity of information content and we feel that it is important for libraries to preserve judiciously both the content, and the containers. We accept the challenges inherent in our societyís move from primarily print- and text-based transmission to the powerful new and integrated graphical, audio, visual, and digital multi-media. We see as more critical and valuable than ever the role that libraries and librarians play in the arena of information management. The reality is that we must develop and provide a broader array of new information delivery and management services, leveraging these new technologies and future innovations, and going further than ever before in connecting our users to quality resources in their quest for knowledge. We aim to be well integrated with our local and virtual communities and a dynamic real and virtual extended classroom.


OUR MISSION

The Brown University Library, in support of the Universityís educational and research mission, is the local repository for, and the principal gateway to, current information and the scholarly record. As such, it is simultaneously collection, connection, and classroom, primarily for the current and future students and faculty of the University, while also serving other colleagues in the University community and our regional, national, and global communities of learning and scholarship.

"The mission of Brown University is to seek, create, communicate, and preserve knowledge and understanding...[and we]...carry out this mission in a unified community known as a university/college..." (Brown University Mission Statement, 1997)

OUR VISION

"I want Brown to be the most dynamic modern learning community in the world. A center of unbridled intellectual inquiry. A place where the past converges with the present and the road to the future is littered with every imaginable tried idea and tested theory". (E. Gordon Gee, Letter from the President, Brown University, September, 1998)

CONTRIBUTING TO THE BROWN COMMUNITY

The Library focuses on our community of students, faculty, and scholars, seeking out and listening to their needs and continuously transforming the Library to exceed their expectations.


COLLECTING

The Library is an active and vital steward, preserving and maximizing the value of a collection of resources assembled over more than two centuries. In keeping with its traditional role, the Library collects, provides access to, facilitates the use of, and preserves books and other printed materials.

No longer, however, can any one academic research library amass the total scholarly record, or even everything necessary to support its local academic mission. Therefore, the Library embraces the concept of a virtual regional, national, and global library, and will collect less through ownership and increasingly through access to worldwide resources. To achieve this, the Library contributes to and benefits from inter-institutional cooperation and collaboration.

No longer, either, are information and scholarly research communicated solely in printed form. Therefore, the Library will acquire or provide access to more informational materials in other formats used in scholarly communication: digital, audio, graphical, and artifactual. The Library will access, or collect and retain, information in any format that enables our users to realize its maximum value. In pursuit of this goal, the Library contributes to scholarship and learning as a creator and publisher of informational and instructional materials.

The Library collects with its present and future user community in mind. It is through quality collections that the Library connects members of our community to the world of knowledge.


CONNECTING

The Library connects the minds of the present with the minds of the past and prepares the way for the minds of the future.

The Library is the primary link between the members of the Brown community and the scholarly record. Developing tools and techniques to connect people to informational resources is a traditional hallmark of librarianship. Increasingly, technological innovations developed and applied by libraries make these connections seemingly unlimited in scope and effortless in ease of use. The Library delivers information to users at the point and time of need, in the format and by the method that each prefers.

The Library also connects people to informational resources using "the human touch." Each member of the Brown community is connected to individuals from the integrated network of Library staff in a collegial working relationship. It is often the Library staff member, not the myriad finding tools, that connects the student, faculty member or scholar to the wealth of print, archival, and manuscript material, as well as to the rich new multimedia materials of the "Information Age." Library staff are fully engaged in the educational experience, guiding users through the scholarly record and teaching them to think critically about information resources.

Every need to know is a welcome challenge, and no question goes unanswered.


EXTENDED CLASSROOM

The Library is a central place within the University-College, "the biggest classroom on campus," and the largest virtual classroom "entered" remotely from dorm rooms, homes, offices, and learning institutions throughout the world.

The Libraryís collecting role generates a never-ending need for bookstack space; however, the Library is more than a warehouse. Its connecting role demands that it provide and maintain an intellectually rich environment, a place for study and reflection, for communication and collaboration, for research, and for the cultivation of knowledge.

Just as a studentís educational experience at Brown molds and enriches his or her life thereafter, so too the Library experience is equally powerful in establishing a foundation for independent lifelong learning.

"Whereas Institutions for liberal Education are highly beneficial to Society by forming the rising Generation to Virtue Knowledge and useful Literature, and thus preserving in the Community a Succession of Men duly qualified for discharging the offices of Life with Usefulness and Reputation..." (Brown University Charter, 1764)

COLLECTING:

GOALS	1999 - 2000 PRIORITIES	ACTION ITEMS
Develop, manage, and promote the use of the collection within three broad discipline areas... Include traditional print and newly emerging formats, as well as physical access and shared ownership options... Refocus decision-making on research and curricular needs of our user populations, University academic directions and priorities, and the vitality of our collections of record...	Evaluate all current collecting areas and define desired levels of research and instructional support Realign the Library Information Resources / Acquisitions budget toward broader accounts	Get to know the research interests of every faculty member, the thesis/dissertation topic of every grad student, the syllabi of every undergraduate course offering Work with faculty on cluster reviews Broaden relationships with departmental faculty in addition to DLRs Create an online, interactive Information Resources Development & Management Policy
Manage the growth of the physical collections...	Develop and support a multifunctional virtual catalog within the Boston Library Consortium Maximize use of on-campus bookstacks space to house materials in high demand; utilize off-site storage space for lesser demand, adequately-indexed materials	Introduce a computer systems which shows all BLC librariesí holdings Implement easy electronic processes for requesting books from BLC libraries Determine the needs of each discipline and user group for browsing and discovery Withdraw selected print volumes for which the Library owns microformats or electronic copies
Make resources accessible to users as soon as possible and with as little staff handling as possible.	Undertake systematic process improvement initiatives	Organize Library staff to work on process improvements and design strategies

CONNECTING:

GOALS	1999 - 2000 PRIORITIES	ACTION ITEMS
Increase contact with faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates doing in-depth research. Strive to connect users to resources, particularly to the Libraryís unique and primary research materials.	Redistribute current discipline/subject specialty responsibility more broadly among existing staff Become available and visible outside of the Library	Involve more Library staff in work with faculty and departments Attend departmental meetings and seminars Initiate librarian "office hoursí" preferably in a space convenient to the department
Provide a more inviting and substantive introduction to the Library for newcomers to the University.	Develop a welcome and orientation program for all new faculty members and staff	Personally welcome and introduce new faculty to resources in their discipline and to Library services Establish a virtual "research center" with names and contacts points of staff
Deliver information resources directly to users electronically: to campus or home desktop, to classrooms or physically to campus locations.	Implement digital interlibrary loan/document delivery services Digitize course reserves, other curricular material and collections of interest to the Brown community; implement electronic submission of course reserve requests	Acquire and send articles directly to usersí desktop workstations Work with faculty to link electronic readings to other course materials online
	Develop a full-service copy center	Provide easy and efficient access to print copies of articles which are stored in non-print formats Investigate costs and charges required to copy and deliver articles on demand

EXTENDED CLASSROOM:

GOALS	1999 - 2000 PRIORITIES	ACTION ITEMS
Implement future-oriented facility planning. Improve existing Library facilities...	Begin to plan for and renovate the Rockefeller Library	Work with University colleagues to assess and prioritize need for renovation and updating of existing space and projected needs for additional space

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