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SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

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5.07-121

Senate Committee on University Priorities

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Memorandum

TO:

Senate

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FROM: ?

John Waterhou

Chair, SCUP

Vice Preside , cademic

RE:

Library Three Year Plan

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DATE: ?

July 18, 200Z./

2007-2010 (SCUP 07-32)

At its July 11, 2007 meeting SCUP reviewed and approved the Library Three Year Plan

for 2007-2010. It is included here for the information of Senate.

end.

C:

L. Copeland

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SCUP 07-32

VICE-PRESIDENT, RESEARCH

Office of the Vice-President

MAILING ADDRESS

8888 University Drive

Burnaby BC Canada

V5A 1S6

TEL 604 291 4152

FAX

604 291 4860

EMAIL

vpres@sfu.ca

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1. Introduction ?

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2. Enhancing scholarly communication, continuing collection development, and

supportingresearch ....................................................................................................... 1

2a.

Enhancing scholarly communication ............................................................................ 1

2b.

Continuing collection development...........................................................................2

2c.

Supporting research.......................................................................................................2

2d.

Branch libraries.............................................................................................................2

3. Enhancing the learning experience...................................................................................3

3a.

Delivered by the Library ............................................................................................... 3

3b.

Delivered by the Student Learning Commons...........................................................3

3c.

Delivered together by the Library and SLC...............................................................4

4. Engaging our other communities ....................................................................................... 4

5. Expanding the physical and virtual library.....................................................................

5

5a.

The virtual library ........................................................................................................5

5b.

The physical library .....................................................................................................6

6. Developing Library staff capabilities and improving operations................................7

6a.

Developing Library staff capabilities ........................................................................7

6b.

Improving Library operations.....................................................................................7

7.

Outcomes ..............................................................................................................................

3.

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1. Introduction

In thinking about the SFU Library's goals over the next three years, we wanted to place them within

the SFU context, "Thinking of the world", as well as ensure that we respond to the President's agenda,

the VP Research Agenda, and the VP Academic Three Year Plan.

In particular, we want over the next eighteen months to explore what might broadly be described as the

changing role of the University Library in the Academy, as we see many initiatives in which the

Library is successfully engaged going beyond what are traditionally considered the academic library

realm. We plan to involve faculty and students in the discussion.

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The broad issues which we will be exploring are:

Enhancing scholarly communication, continuing

research

Enhancing the learning experience

Engaging our other communities

Expanding the physical and virtual library

Developing library staff and improving operations

collection development, and supporting

The President's Agenda includes three broad themes: academic quality enhancement, student life, and

public profile. The VP Research Agenda includes: maximizing opportunities for discovery and

innovation; promoting internationally competitive research and scholarship; cultivating excellence

through investment in emerging areas of research; facilitating collaborations across disciplinary and

institutional boundaries; recruiting and retaining outstanding students, research fellows, and faculty;

encouraging effective communication and dissemination of research results; optimizing use of our

research and scholarship resources; recognizing the full value of intellectual property; achieving

thematic coherence in the expression of SFU's research interests; and engaging all our communities for

the benefit of society. The VP Academic Plan addresses: student service and success; research innovation

& quality; academic innovation & quality; succession planning; First Nations; and financial

sustainability. Together, they encompass a vision of a strong, vibrant research and teaching

environment at Simon Fraser University. SFU Library, in turn, seeks through this three year plan to

contribute to the attainment of that vision.

At the same time, there is a pressing need to improve and expand space, particularly at the WAC

Bennett Library, which provides inadequate student seating even now, and which will effectively be

out of stack space in three years.

2. Enhancing scholarly communication, continuing collection development, and

supporting research

2a. Enhancing scholarly communication

Recent interest in reforming scholarly communication, has arisen in large measure because of the

unsustainable steeply rising cost of commercially published scholarly journals. In response to this

situation, SFU Library, along with other Canadian university libraries, has worked to develop joint

licencing initiatives through organizations such as the Canadian Research Knowledge Network

(CRKN) and BC Electronic Library Network (ELN) to reduce the cost of individual titles and to

increase the selection of journals available to SFU faculty and students. It is noteworthy that of the

largest, most expensive online journal collections, ninety percent were used at least once in the past year,

though many were titles not formerly available in print at SFU. Some twelve per cent of the most used

electronic journals were never subscribed to by SFU Library. Thus the library's enhanced buying power

and strategic collection development are contributing to the University's research agenda.

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While research and the publishing of the results of research are primarily the realm of the research

community, there is still a role the Library can play. In addition to purchasing and licencing print,

electronic and other collections, the Library provides access to peer reviewed open access journals, has

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SFU Libraiy 3 Year Plan 2007-2010

supported colloquia devoted to related topics, and provides an institutional repository which is used to

house permanent copies of the results of research, including electronic copies of SFU theses. We also

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maintain memberships in many alternative publishing ventures (i.e. Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, SPARC, Directory of Open Access journals, etc). Our memberships inBioMedCentral and

Public Library of Science, for example, reduce the cost for SFU researchers to publish in journals from

these publishers.

Over the next three years, we will investigate these issues further. For example, we

wirl work to raise

awareness among faculty about issues such as authors' rights and copyright transfer agreements, so that

they are able to ensure that the results of their research remain in their control without jeopardizing

their publishing record.

In response to numerous requests, we plan to host a journal editors forum for faculty members, hold

authors' rights workshop(s) for faculty members and grad students, work across all SFU campuses and

with other BC Research Libraries Group libraries and liaison librarians to raise awareness of these

issues, and work with Public Knowledge Project (PKP), liaison librarians, and faculty to raise

awareness and understanding of the Public Knowledge Project and the potential of its software (OJS

OCS and metadata harvester) as well as options for Open Access. We will plan and develop knowledge

about open access, impact factors, publishers and publishing.

University of California Library lists one of five strategic priorities as: 'influencing the development

of new forms of scholarly communication". In order to guide our activities, we will develop an

equivalent and realistic statement for SFU Library.

2b.

Continuing collection development

At the same time, we will be engaged in more practical yet key issues. We will ensure continuing strong

. support for the collections budget while developing priorities in changing budget circumstances;

continue to build relevant collections in all formats, including print monographs, electronic collections,

particularly e-journals, e-books, multimedia, reference sources, and financial and GIS data. We will

continue to create excellent collections at the branches that support courses, programmes and research at

those locations.

With the potential faculty realignment we will continue to review collection development policies and

liaison support to ensure that the collections budget allocation responds to the increasing

interdisciplinarity of study and research at SFU. SFU Library has and will continue to provide

leadership in joint collection development through consortia such as the BC Electronic Library

Network, Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries, e-Health Library of BC, and the CFI-

funded Canadian Research Knowledge Network project to expand access to humanities and social

sciences resources online.

2c. Supporting research

Librarians support research by identifying information sources to further research projects, providing

instruction for complex resources and tools such as SciFinder Scholar and RefWorks, working with

faculty and students to clarify approaches to information retrieval and analysis. In addition, we will

support SFU research and contribute to research activities elsewhere through digitization projects such

as Multicultural Canada projects, Kootenay School of Writing Audio Files, CHODARR materials

relating to Downtown Eastside organizations, HCI-Book SSHRC New Media proposal, Special

Collections audio tape collection. We will expand and simplify procedures for and promote the SFU

Institutional Repository to support a variety of conference proceedings and other papers, non-

traditional materials eg. Dance DVDs, Archives. We will put in place improved access mechanisms for

institutional repository materials.

2d.

Branch libraries

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SFU Library 3 Year Plan 2007-2010

Branch libraries will continue to lead the collaborative delivery of services for faculty and students at

the branch campuses; by working closely together, library staff from all three campuses ensure that the

highest quality services and collections are available at all locations. The advent of online journals,

ebooks, and other resources has contributed greatly to our capability to do so.

In the next three years, we will implement the Belzberg Library service/ collection plan and support

the request for funding to expand the Belzberg Library for collections, (including collections for the

relocated School for Contemporary Arts), as well as for instruction and the Student Learning Commons.

We will continue to enhance SFU Surrey library collections and services to support expanding programs.

We will begin to plan for the expansion of the SFU Surrey Learning Commons and Library collections,

services and space to meet the needs of 5,000 FTE students in 2015.

3. Enhancing the learning experience

3a.

Delivered by the Library

The Library's ultimate goal is to ensure that students graduate knowing how to find, analyze and

evaluate information within the context of their disciplines.

Most SFU students over the next ten years will be of the 'Millennial' generation. The Library needs to

consider the ways it presents information and provides services to these students while ensuring that

mature or returning students and students from other languages and cultures, as well as faculty and

researchers, are also supported. We need to review and revise instructional programmes to meet these

changing student needs and learning styles. We need to continue to solicit student and faculty input in

the creation of services and the physical environment.

Library services will need to be even more user-focused, flexible, and convenient; we need to offer

choices and enhance space and technology. We will need to simplify and streamline to deliver a mix of

learner support services in a variety of modes: in-person, online, real time, self-paced. We will continue

to seek opportunities to extend in-person reference services beyond the reference desk, (for example by

expanding Ask Us Here and office hours).

We need to develop instructional and reference online, in-class, and one-on-one programmes and services

for all our users that offer choices, flexibility, convenience, personalization, customization, speed,

experiential

learning,

media rich environments, and seamless technology. We will continue to advocate

for the Library's key role in fostering the development of students' research competencies through

instruction and other means and to co-ordinate with other campus units in support of student learning.

With the increasingly diverse background of students, services and materials, particularly for incoming

students, we will need to address where they start as entering students when focusing on where they

need to be.

In teaching and explaining tools or processes we need to ensure that we have developed the simplest

possible procedures, particularly in accessing

online

resources. To this end, Systems staff and liaison

librarians will work together on an ongoing and consultative basis.

The Maps/Data/GIS services and collections support a wide range of subjects. We will work to improve

the effectiveness of Maps/Data/GIS services by more fully integrating them into liaison activities;

improving workstation hardware, software in the Maps/Data/GIS room by partnering with

departments (eg Geography); and expanding data sets, in particular for financial and geospatial data.

3b.

Delivered by the

Student Learning Commons

The Student

Learning

Commons opened in September 2006 to assist and support students in their

academic pursuits, with a focus on providing writing and learning support services across the three SFU

campuses. The SLC is based in the libraries on all three campuses.

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SFU Library 3 Year Plan 2007-2010

In October 2006, the SLC produced a comprehensive Three Year Plan available on the web site at

SFU Library 3 Year Plan 2007-2010

Alumni and UniverCity residents receive special privileges and we continue to look to ways to reach out

to them.

SFU Library provides outreach through programmes which it supports on the Burnaby and Vancouver

campuses. These include readings and series such as the 'Share the Enthusiasm' series about collecting.

In Fall, 2007, we plan to host a recognition event for faculty and staff who have published books over

the recent past. We also participate in Word on the Street, and SFU activities such as Open House. We

will continue to explore these opportunities.

SFU Library works with BC Postsecondary libraries to develop joint activities to support our students.

In particular, we continue to house the BC Electronic Library Network which supports BC

postsecondary libraries, particularly in online licencing initiatives. The closeness of this has benefited

both SFU Library and ELN libraries as we have worked together since the ELN's inception, with SFU

acting as developer or agent on a number of projects. SFU Library has been selected to provide support

for the GNWC students and faculty and supports the SFU Resource Centre in Kamloops.

SFU Library works with local public libraries on ensuring our services articulate where appropriate,

with services to the general public. Particularly for SFU students, the public library serves as a study

space and as a source for materials and SFU library provides access to its collections to a limited number

of local residents.

SFU continues to play a key role in the national Canadian Research Knowledge Network, with a

representative on the Negotations Resource Team.

Beyond libraries, SFU Library has partnerships with publishers and scholars, for example in the CFI-

funded Synergies Project and the SFU Centre for Studies in Print and Media Cultures. SFU librarians are

represented on the Canadiana.org

Board and in a number of other co-ordinate organizations such as the

Pacific Bookworld Society.

These relationships benefit the SFU Library and SFU in a number of tangible and intangible ways and

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we will continue to develop themboth on an individual and an organizational basis. We will use social

web technologies where appropriate to enhance community outreach.

SFU Library has been successful in developing software of use beyond SFU and funded in part through

outside funds. Over the next three years the Library will ensure its continuing quality of services and

collections. We will maintain the Library's role as a leader in technology by continuing to act as a

consultant and provider of expert support for other institutions, on a cost recovery basis, and as a

participant in various projects and initiatives, including the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and

related affiliations with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and

the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP); Synergies, a CFI

funded project; the reSearcher software (Rothskilde, eIFL); AlouetteCanada's New Media Metadata

toolkit project; and theses backfile digitization (UVIC Library).

5. Expanding the physical and virtual library

5a. The

virtual library

With the increasingly diverse capability of the internet and software resources to support interactive

services, we will take even greater advantage of software to provide these services. With Learning

Management Systems software beginning to provide the capability, we will embed interactive guides

and learning spaces in course management software. In consultation with public services staff systems

staff will explore ways to re-purpose usage information to improve access, e.g. refine site usability; to

provide new features, e.g. search tag clouds, podcast, textmsg, phone support eg for online reserves; to

implement software and services that enable users to do more remotely and directly, e.g. online fines

payment; to extract and to contribute content, e.g. custom reports, tagging of bibliographic records, saved

cross-database searches.

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SFU Library 3 Year Plan 2007-2010

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With increasingly complex and changing technology and students who are at home in the online

environment, we need to ensure that access to the print and electronic collection takes advantage of

• software advancements. These include single search mechanisms similar to google, and social web

features that support more integration and customization, e.g. tagging, subject wikis, RSS feeds, instant

messaging, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing

among users and utilize them to best provide library services. We will take advantage of the Web 2.0

characteristics of openness, ease of use, innovation, social interaction, creation of content, sharing,

decentralization, participation, trust.

5b. The physical library

Over the past ten years, the WAC Bennett Library has been renovated toward two purposes: improving

active learning and study space and reorganizing the stacks to accommodate its increasing physical

collection. There is demonstrable need for expansion in all three areas, particularly stack space.

Further, wiring, seismic upgrading, and other infrastructure requirements for this forty-two year old

facility are badly needed.

Stack space in the Bennett Library is becoming increasingly crowded, with effectively three years of

growth remaining. Student seating is lower than at corresponding institutions (SFU - 1336 UVIC -1523

Waterloo - 2074 all locations) and there is no room to increase capacity. Staff space is also crowded.

Thus space is thus no longer a medium term issue but a pressing one.

Expansion into the boiler room area, which would provide approximately 20,000 sq. feet, is a preferred

option provided another location is identified for the boiler roomoncampus. Failing that, expansion to

the north, consistent with the heritage nature of the building, must be considered as the only viable

option. Such an expansion will be considerably beyond the scope of current fundraising efforts, which

have enabled us to reconfigure and modernize existing space more appropriately. Thus over the next

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year, we will be making the case to the University administration that expansion of the WAC Bennett

Library must be a priority.

Meanwhile, over the next three years, SFU Library will need to increase shelving capacity where

possible within the existing shell and appropriately reconfigure existing space to the extentpossible.

We will need to continue to articulate the importance of library space in providing access to learning

and research resources, academic support, and active and quiet study space for students.

Despite the plethora of online resources, the physical collection continues to be heavily used. With its

continuing low volumes per student in comparison with its peer libraries, with the continuing heavy use

of the book collection, to discontinue building the physical collection would severely hamper SFU

student and researcher access to the resources they need to succeed, notwithstanding the very strong

document delivery and reciprocal borrowing privileges we share with BC postsecondary and Canadian

University Libraries. Compounding the shelving crunch at the Bennett Library is the situation at the

branches. While Surrey has just opened a new library, the Belzberg Library is completely at capacity

and renovations to the library mezzanine to double the physical volume capacity must be funded in the

coming year. Even with this increase, the expanding programming in Vancouver and Surrey, such as the

move of the School for the Contemporary Arts, means they will both be out of stack space within a few

years.

Failing funding to expand, the Library will need to expend the significant time and dollars required to

develop and implement collection weeding and/or offsite storage plans. The irony is that such a

direction reduces service capacity both in its ultimate goal and in its execution. Nevertheless,

preliminary planning, should such a processbe necessary, will need to begin in years two and three.

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Information Commons on floors 2 and 3; adequate space and seating for quiet study throughout the

library's public spaces; clear signage; adequate power sources and wireless coverage; and a welcoming

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SFU Library

3

Year Plan 2007-2010

and functional entrance way and support desk. We will renovate Special Collections space to make

more it more effective and secure.

6. Developing Library staff capabilities and improving operations -

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6a.

Developing Library staff capabilities

In order that the Library continue to change with the changing environment, it is crucial that all

library employees (librarians, CUPE, and APSA) be given opportunities and be encouraged to engage in

learning opportunities and that the Library working environment be conducive to exploration and

experimentation. It is also important that all library staff work together in a mutually supportive

environment and that open communication and dialogue continue. Over the next three years, we will

continue efforts to improve communication between library administration and librarians and CUPE and

APSA staff and work to ensure a collaborative working environment which supports mutual respect

among employees; and improve interaction with new staff; eg pictures on the staff web site, a welcome

event every few months and so on. We will maintain and enhance an environment in which the talents,

skills and contributions of all staff members are respected and valued. Where feasible, we will support

librarian and staff exchanges across branches and with peer institutions.

In particular, systems and reference staff will work together to ensure that training and opportunities

are available to implement web tools such as wiki's, blogs, RSS feeds, etc. to meet public access needs

while at the same time meeting security requirements and other library priorities. We will foster a

culture of staff creativity and capacity development in the use of innovative technology to serve

library users.

6b.

Improving Library operations

Increasingly, technology provides a backbone on which library services and collections rely. We will

ensure the robustness of our technolo

g

y by planning for disaster recovery and business continuity in

consultation with IT Services and by developing a digital preservation strategy.

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With limited staff resources and increasing and more complex materials to process, the capacity to

move materials from the order point to the shelf has been severely constrained and has resulted in an

unacceptable backlog. This is a disservice to faculty and students and results in increased work to

provide access to individual needed items. Over the past six months, efforts have been undertaken by

processing staff to improve this situation. Over the next three years, we will eliminate this processing

backlog. A number of different strategies have been and will be used. These include eliminating

unnecessary or specialized processing for certain materials, streamlining workflows where feasible, and

taking advantage of new technologies to improve processes. In certain cases, activities may be

eliminated or reduced in preference to expediting the moving of materials to the shelf (for example

authority work may be limited to the automated activity which handles the most common situations).

Given the highly sophisticated access provided by online systems, SFU Library will follow other

libraries' practice, knowing that access to the materials will not be restricted.

Other areas which will benefit from changed processes include working toward increased inter-

operability between the Library's Innovative Acquisitions module and the University's PeopleSoft

Financial system and developing and implementing the locally developed Electronic Resource

Management (ERM) module within the CUFTS software.

7. Outcomes

Ultimately the success of the Library's goals should be their contribution to the success of the

institution in learning, research and community relations. While we may look to anecdotal evidence to

support our contributions, we need to rely on other less direct evidence as well. Survey results have in

the past and will continue to show the success of initiatives we undertake; we are participating in the

Libqual+ survey in Fall 2007 which will enable us better to compare our services and service gaps with

our peers. Comparisons with our peers are also useful, though careful interpretation is often required.

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SFU Library 3 Year Plan 2007-2010

The Library has and will continue to monitor the success of its endeavors using these direct and indirect

measures.

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