Strategic Directions
Columbia University Libraries embarked on its Strategic Directions process to benefit from the ideas and enthusiasm of key stakeholders and staff and to provide guidance for the Libraries' decision-making, resource allocation, and partnerships for the next five years. The resulting directions, which articulate a bold and expansive agenda for the Libraries, are guided by input from the Provost, faculty, and students and are closely aligned with University priorities.
By listening, thinking, and planning together, our Strategic Directions inspire us to raise the expectations we have for ourselves, guide the aspirations we have to advance research and knowledge at an even higher level, and invigorate the hopes we have for the positive difference we can make in the world.
We hope the directions motivate you to collaborate with us and lend your support to our ambitions for the Libraries' future.
Challenge the organization to enable a thriving, inclusive community by embedding support and welcome for all identities and cultural experiences in our efforts, conversations, and actions.
Columbia University Libraries is committed to doing the work of diversity and inclusion – including the continual unlearning of inherent biases – acting on increased insights in culturally appropriate ways to facilitate learning and professional growth and to foster a variety of perspectives and ideas to address complex challenges. The University benefits from broad perspectives and depths of insight derived from working collaboratively with individuals from other disciplines or professions, of different ages, cultures, identities, abilities, economic backgrounds, beliefs, and values.
Build, steward, and leverage collections distinguished by scope, quality, and scale to inform memory and enhance scholarship.
As a foundation for supporting research and teaching, Columbia's collections are central to the University's intellectual distinction and highest ambitions. The Libraries build, shape, sustain, and make discoverable collections that transcend traditional boundaries of format and domain, offer enduring research value, and support the intellectual curiosity of Columbia faculty and students. We secure unique, vulnerable, and evanescent materials through diligent curation and stewardship of works in print, digital, and media formats. We work to preserve our shared heritage in the face of format degradation and digital impermanence. By working inter-institutionally, we acquire, manage, and provide persistent access to millions of collection materials – products of the past and those of current scholarship – creating the greatest opportunities for scholars and students to encounter global thought.
Engage with students to explore broadly, discover deeply, and participate meaningfully in a global, diverse society.
In a dynamic and rapidly evolving information environment, Columbia’s students have an ever greater responsibility to understand the complexities of information, data, and scholarship and to use them ethically and effectively. The Libraries, at the intellectual heart of the University, support students as explorers, with the journey as rewarding as the results of each learning and research experience. We extend student learning by developing their literacy skills – cultural, textual, and visual – and through this process, inspiring an authentic and purposeful world view.
Cultivate a campus research environment that generates a wellspring of expertise, accelerates the production of new knowledge, and amplifies research outcomes.
As vital collaborators in Columbia’s research ecosystem, we work with our academic colleagues to instigate new inquiry and support evolving investigations. The Libraries build dynamic information systems that enable our scholars to create, preserve and disseminate their research in the most nimble, open and broad-scale ways.
Through our technical infrastructure, outreach efforts, and deep subject expertise, we integrate a libraries-wide network of research support services and programs into project collaborations. We marshal a unique array of human and information resources to enrich research processes, nourish creativity, and further understanding of our complex multi-disciplinary world. We pursue responsibility for multi-stream data identification and management. We develop strategies and champion initiatives that expand access to Columbia scholars’ research outputs to the broadest possible global audience.
Lead with knowledge, forge a bold, ambitious agenda, and pursue strategic innovations that accelerate library performance in partnership with a collaborative community of practice.
Working with a worldwide community of partners, the Libraries invest expertise and effort to support high-impact development in areas of common need and concern. Consciously global in our thinking, provoking and providing leadership in areas critical to the success of libraries and information systems, we challenge our partners to commit to an ambitious agenda that applies our collective advances to a common good. Building on our distinguished history of library practice, we bring to bear our knowledge and experience to imagine and engage in scalable systems of collective collecting, pursue maximum connectivity through advanced metadata development, double-down our focus on shared enabling technologies, and promote open scholarly communication in policy, strategy, infrastructure, and community action.
Support individual agency and create structures that allow staff to act nimbly, provoke change, and assert our roles in substantive academic endeavor.
Across our vibrant organization, staff seek to work more closely together and to set in motion a change process that enables a culture of experimentation, in balance with the high-trust suite of services our constituencies depend on. We foster a more agile, laboratory-like practice that encourages creativity and innovation, provides opportunity for staff development, reduces barriers and streamlines processes that make our library work with more speed and efficiency. We find and value within ourselves a breadth and depth of diverse expertise positioned to connect the seemingly unconnected. Our unique skills and knowledge substantially contribute to the heart and core of the University’s success in fulfilling its mission.