Summary of Responses

1.   What do you envision the role of our library should be in 2020?  How will it support the learning mission of the college?  How will its role differ from other learning activities on campus?

Priorities & Planning

• As information changes—funding change? 
• Role will not change, but what is in the library will change; as repository it will be same
• Will connect information
• How students interact with the library will change
• Will help students find information
• Library as repository and conduit of knowledge
• Conduit is new thing—shift more by 2020 (conduits)
• Wonder about costs to access—some cheaper, some more expensive
• Source of information but also space for scholars to gather
• Also may be used for recreational reading, find reading to enjoy
• Different libraries help find information, teach students how to use library
• Will still have books
• Like Barnes & Noble to have coffee—not structured—spontaneous learning

Faculty Assembly Executive Council

• This question was easier to answer 25-30 years ago when there was no new technology conceived. Moving further and further into databases, meaning info access can be carried out anywhere, as opposed to within the library. This can only go so far. Still have to have books and access the past. Dangers in databases – may be holdup down the road – once we’re not buying books/journals, vendors may jack up prices so that we can’t afford anything else. Careful not to jump into the new world of the Internet to the exclusion of old tech. Books are still the best way for reading to take place. Encourage us not to buy in unthinkingly into the new tech that might suggest that we no longer need journals and books.
• Be cautious for the above reasons. Develop 2 libraries: electronic/cyber and brick/mortar. Brick/mortar takes on central role as meeting place for faculty/students; use physical space for opportunities to come together. SUNY system to continue partnership roles, ILL (Inter Library Loan), purchases across campus. Work towards continuing the path of partnership with other campuses and SUNY central for buying power.
• (Texaco vs.? case cited) might run into danger IF we decide on distributed buying of journals across institutions to save money. (expensive chemical  abstracts, copyright violation cited) Need to negotiate a SUNY wide license for use.
• Become a partner in dept. development. Info becomes so specialized so that the real knowledge areas are housed in the dept not library. Library will need to partner to locate resources and execute ways in getting info to faculty/students. Tech become more dispersed not highly concentrated, so many venues to disperse. Podcasts, videos, tablet pcs all technologies to be considered. Define the right resources to serve depts. curriculum needs.
• Also a need to instruct students. So much out there. Think about what’s out there, organize for students. Judging criteria for quality of information. More of a team teaching approach with library staff and faculty.
• Now – resource pages by content areas. Envision a 1 credit hour course for frosh/xfer students specific to your dept/subject area. How to use specialized resources. Part of the curriculum to show how library interacts with that discipline.
• This course happens at the beginning (of a student’s coursework at Oswego)? More instruction, when they become more advanced?  Expansion of the faculty role of librarians. Work out the liaison between related departs in terms of developments taking place. Relationships to Comm studies, English, journalism cited – categories get blurry – someone must be responsible for negotiating the “web of lines”.
• Scholar dependent on primary texts. Particular relationship also in English – first printing of books of poetry as an example. Success, value, cultural meaning of documents in context. Can’t get too far from recognizing that part of what we’re doing. Finding ourselves w/o book we would become hamstrung;
• Databases are tremendous about journals. Don’t touch primary sources, monographs. History is dependent upon primary sources and monographs. Don’t see the Internet and databases picking up these areas of our scholarly calling.
• The capacity for making e –copies of things is vastly more accomplished
• Particularly copyright issues regarding Google
• Great thing about periodicals in the libraries (LIFE, LOOK, Sat Eve Post) – gives a real sense of the social culture (advertising) of the time. Does not get databased. Lose all sense of being an agricultural community and things that don’t exist now. Student won’t be aware of these aspects without being able to flip through these. Annoying about librarians – do not want to deal with these issues. Can ask them (the librarians). Don’t want to deal. Videos from 60s destroyed because of lack of playback technology and copyright restrictions to dub to new media (central administration ruling). No 1960’s vtrs (video tape recorders) left.
• Richness of artifacts and context…
• Libraries as places for maintaining not just docs but technology of access. Keeping track of “Jurassic technology” to keep us in touch with the dangers of losing this access.
• Think of databases –17K journals – JSTOR? – just computer technology changes every 5 years or so, there’s no way any small operation/library can update when the technology changes and pages have to be converted to whatever the new technology is.
• Grads – more certificate/graduate programs to offer without students dealing with our specific library in person. More development of that  “electronic thing” for separate and particular programs, have to develop or it will create problems
• The library needs to serve all SUNY Oswego students, and the community at large? Online students, hybrid students – (we have done a) good job so far. Need to partner more to determine what students need.
• Congressional/Federal Records Depository – less and less important, but still a real resource. 11^th grade students performed research here using federal documents – want to encourage such partnerships going forward.
• Teaching students to tell junk from something worthwhile. What are reliable websites?

A&S Chairs

• The virtual library at Humboldt U is designed as part of virtual world that provides an interactive, gaming-type experience.  The library is still an archive, but users work cooperatively with librarians and other patrons in the virtual environment.
• Research is more performative now, not just retrieving information.  Librarians may act more as programmers who can help you locate the status of the info you’re looking for.
• We need to balance need for density of people in space with dispersion of information.  Technology isn’t always the answer – microfilm and microfiche were more tedious than using paper – so we need to find a balance with users’ real needs.
• The concern with students who try to do research solely online is the loss of the opportunity to discover books serendipitously in stacks.  Is there some way with this sort of new technology that that can happen online?  Yes – similar to Amazon’s “books like this” feature.  Serendipity is an important factor that should be built in.
• We come from a way of interacting with libraries physically that we’re used to.  Kids in 2020 will have a totally different mindset.  The library could incorporate artificial intelligence agents that watch users’ searches and make suggestions.
• Scholarly output will involve considerably more multimedia in place of traditional articles – audio, video, etc. to be commented on.  The nature of publications themselves will likely change considerably.
• Computer screens make it difficult to read lengthy material, and difficult to induce students to read lengthy stuff online.
• Surveillance, government control issues, and privacy are always a concern.  Even though libraries are active in opposing this, online environment may make it possible to bypass the library.
• Is a library different from a central processing unit and storage?  Will students socialize via virtual bodies, including with librarians etc.?  Do you need a physical space, or can it all happen in a virtual space?  Do people need physical contact with each other?
• Historically, libraries were not just repositories; they were gathering places for scholars and students.  It was the connection that was important.  Hosting the Faculty Development Center in the library is consistent with the library’s educational focus.  Will need training to get faculty up to speed on rapidly changing technology.
• Troubling to assume that the library archives information and not knowledge.  A huge role of libraries/librarians is to promote interaction with knowledge, not just gathering information.  This is a troubling mindset in students.

Provost’s Council

• Information literacy, encompassing the evaluation and synthesis of information, will be increasingly important.
• There must be opportunities for informal learning opportunities.
• Information will increasingly be digitalized and centralized.  Hopefully the major databases will be picked up centrally due to the costs.  The local library still must be the hub.
• It will still be a gathering place, but its contents will look different.  There will still be a lot of books, but periodicals, newspapers, and other information sources of a physical nature will change.  At the same time, people still like tangible products.  Students still print documents out because they want a physical copy.
• Students won’t even be using laptops in 2020; the technology will more resemble a PDA or something like that.  Library will need to provide support for that sort of technology.
• Online searching, etc., will go even farther.  The vast majority of topics are going to be pre-searched by a librarian and turned into modules that can be plugged into a course for students to access.  The student or instructor won’t really have to go to library for this sort of content used in online classrooms or for student research.  Only when doing pure research or creative work or when going beyond the typical boundaries of undergraduate research, will you need to do what we think of now as research.  The library will manage these pre-searched topics and the databases.
• Everything will be pervasive and easily accessible.  Can access information that you’d formerly need to physically retrieve.  Libraries will continue to be depositories in some extent; there will still be books, but all monographs will be available in some electronic form unless there are copyright impediments.  The library will serve as the common space for the whole campus for group study, teamwork, engaging faculty with students and peer-to-peer interaction.  The library’s role as nexus may even be more important over time, but its role as a physical repository will be diminished.

SOB

·         Library will be central information repository. 

·         Access will be different.

·         Musty halls and the smell of books is pretty neat.  The place will smell different.

·         Designed so library is the natural place to go for students and faculty – if you are not asking questions, new knowledge, someone will take your market.

·         Library portal--clearing house for everything.

·         Diverse set of sources – desirable

·         Students need to be critical users of information.

·         Library will help students make judgments about information -- Can’t be lost service, helping to evaluate information

·         World before internet is ancient history to students

·         Hate the thought of losing books.

·         Social aspect of the library will be important – lake effect café.

·         Current pedagogy may change.  Library space/function should be able to adapt.  Example, team work is current pedagogy model – in future will we deemphasize teams because some members take a free ride.

·         Is there a risk that information will not always be free,   Will cost structure of information change? 

·         Where will SUNY Oswego be in scheme of SUNY?

CTAB

·         Books are portable, durable; they will be around for a while. Technology is not “cuddleable”

·         Artificial intelligence functions may replace researching or library instruction

·         Collections will contain much more multimedia and will be centralized. 

·         Whole collection may be accessed from external places

·         The laptop may be changed, maybe be multimedia, how we use it will be changed

·         Iliad takes weeks, we want instantaneous information

      COLT      

·         Purpose will still be to put students and faculty in contact with information. 

·         Format of the sources of information be changed.

·         Number of sources of information will increase.

·         Resource for faculty and students.  Continuing faculty will need instruction on how to access information.

·         Library will want to stress quality of information and how to evaluate information.

·         Not just media storage or an access place, but a place for connections, social and intellectual.  Students may be more isolated, especially online students or hybrid course students. Friendly and inviting

·         Publishing, and especially academic publishing may change.  All journals are on line.  We will need access to discipline journals.

·         Finding information will be easier, evaluating and the synthesis information will be more important.   Library is the place where everyone, faculty and students will go to get up to speed.

SOE

·         Library must help students understand how to collect information from databases, etc. – Faculty value the role the library plays in instructional courses.

·         The library helps make “the newest” thing happen in its support for hybrid courses, distance learning, etc.

·         Library’s online presence needs to be friendlier and easily manageable for online students.  NYPL lends e-books totally online now; download book and becomes unreadable after 2 weeks.  Currently Penfield does mainly reference books online; should they extend it to pleasure reading?

·         Library’s role is supportive and enriching of ideas taught in the classroom.  Upper divisional research is highly dependent on library support.

·         The library differs because it provides a space for people from different classes/majors to interact academically.

Academic Policies

·         Gateway to information

·         A place where faculty continues to send students for retrieval of information but also to evaluate it as it evolves.

·         Should be the university center: create larger rooms for storage of information especially archival resources that are likely to go out of circulation. Regional repository of unique collections.

·         Respond to the general trends of the university.

·         Provide free access to information for all users and avoid “selling out” to multinational corporations.

·         Participate in a SUNY wide centralized data base to avoid duplication.

Graduate Council

·         A home for classics and other materials which are not likely to be digitized.

·         A center of information: an intellectual center where faculty, students and librarians operate from.

·         A central place to provide an intimate space for students and faculty with their research.

·         A place that offers a variety of spaces such as seminar rooms, group work spaces that projects can spread out, visual/audio centers for videos, CDs, films.

·         A relaxed atmosphere and inviting place where community can access materials.. Much less a stiff place akin to church. More like the present café atmosphere.

SCAC

·         It’s likely to be more virtual than bricks/mortar.  Currently the mix is probably 80% physical, 20% virtual; by then, maybe 20/80?

·         The perfect library:  one that you don’t have to leave the house to use.

·         The library should increase the number of online journals so students have a bigger group to choose from; they currently limit their search to what’s easily available (i.e., only online sources.)

·         Virtualization is inevitable.  Thus the library will be the “super-portal”, both virtually and physically.

·         The library will place a greater emphasis on special collections, since that’s what will increasingly make libraries unique.

·         Video on demand will be available on campus with ubiquitous broadband – the library would be the ideal place for one or more high-quality screening rooms.

·         Publishers are beginning to offer the option to pick and choose chapters, essays, etc., to build their own course texts; library could easily play the role of purchasing all that content and creating them at a more wholesale level.

·         The library has always been the repository of worldwide cultural heritage.  We must keep in contact with the knowledge of the past on which we continue to build.

Librarians

• Connecter/conduit of information and knowledge
• Provide a variety of learning spaces and opportunities
• A gathering place for spirited debate of issues and ideas, by both students and faculty.  A space for the continuation of learning outside the formal classroom (more actual learning takes place in spaces outside the formal classroom than within, especially when it must be applied, as in conducting [library] research)
• Hub or core of the campus academic community for learning and intellectual activity
• Libraries will continue to provide “free” access to information and the technology needed for that access
• In a democratic society, libraries are needed to serve in the role of equalizing access to information, so that we do not become a nation of “information haves” and “have-nots”
• Reminder that print is still a very successful technology
• Use of print IS, however, changing; some of this change is discipline specific
• Need for research skills is increasing, rather than decreasing as a result of information explosion
• Lots of confusion across campus about difference between Internet web-based resources and library web-based resources
• Centralized mission of Library to serve “all” areas of the College
• Need to market library resources and services better
• Importance of Library web pages today - - the Library web-site is the main point of access to resources these days - - its development is complex
• Envision more collaboration between librarians and other faculty; more one-on-one work with faculty and students to assist in mastering access to quality information in a virtual world
• Move from “a place to be” to a “place to participate…” in all kinds of academic inquiry
• Library will continue to be a store house of quality information though the formatting of how that information is held will continue to change
• We are not “getting rid of knowledge”, just changing the formats in which it is found
• “Paper” will always be with us; people use it annually in ever greater quantities
• As radio was to television, so the book may be to online information access;  it is just a very easy format to work with
• Projects such as “Google Print” will unlock access to material in monographs in new ways that have heretofore not been possible; people may, for example, choose, once they peruse a book online, to seek out the real thing for their reading pleasure, by either accessing it in a library or purchasing a copy
• For large amounts of information, electronic access is still not as flexible and easy to use as print
• With print, we are not at the mercy of rapidly changing technologies
• There is a good reason why journal use online has developed so much more quickly that the use of monographs;  with a journal article, you are generally accessing a limited amount of information;  and, of course, most people even print out the journal articles they are accessing
• Library instruction, or information literacy, will be more integrated into the educational mission of the College
• Ideas for the future of the Library are not limited by the mind, just by the budget

Acad. Quality

• The library should be central to the campus, because college is a place where people learn to use information, discriminate among sources of information, and create information.  Because of changing technology, we all need to be able to rely on the library to keep pace with changes in scholarly information.  The library is more basic than other activities on campus because they (the other activities) depend on the library’s gateways into information.
• If active learning is working on an individual level, the library is foundational because less and less learning needs to go in the physical classroom.

Library Support Staff

·         Yes, technology will change a lot, and the library should be involved in it.  Faculty tend to assume students know more re: technology than they do, and we should be involved in that education/support.  Students come to circ needing help with wireless; they’d rather be walked through it than just read a handout.

·         Number of non-traditional students will continue to increase, and they may be more comfortable going to librarians for help rather than IT depending on their computer skill set.  They’re likely to need more help using databases as well, and are more likely to turn to a librarian.

·         Need to meet with faculty more to get students to use the print collection; otherwise students are only going to use online sources.  We need to preserve the written word.

2.   What kind of place should it be?  How will the building spaces serve students and faculty?  What kinds of spaces and activities should be part of the building?  What kinds of activities will happen virtually?

Priorities & Planning

• Like Barnes & Noble
• Social space
• Library might be infused around campus, but remains a core hub—it is necessary to have building “library”
• Maybe like B. Fuller idea of all spokes coming out of hub—internet opens this possibility of decentralized place
• Scholarly and social connections to further knowledge, social interaction needed
• Still want to go to the library to “get lost”
• “Academic services space”—faculty development center, find info—(student & faculty)
• Student study—project area—work on projects
• Many students go to library virtually—could receive guidance from librarians virtually

Faculty Assembly Executive Council

• Needs to be a meeting space
• Seminar rooms, graduate seminar rooms, among the books, perhaps in nicer, smaller, informal settings than classrooms. Annoyed with way library is set up – no sense – why a computer room off to one side, instructional room, off to one side. More terminals scattered about- encourage students TO GET INTO the library and discover materials. Need more library instruction space. Spaces accommodate classes up to 30 –how to handle larger groups?
• Satellite meeting rooms around campus? Librarians assigned out to different locations.
• Quiet space needed. More esthetically pleasing. Café a wonderful addition – feel like you’re part of the same century in that room. Some furniture/carpets are older than some faculty members. Has an impact on ability to learn and focus. Fun place to hang out, and learn, not drudgery.
• Room was UGLY before it became a café, now it’s the nicest room on campus.

·         Past conference - on media- utterly filled up; could be made available electronically. Hard to find a way to connect our students with an all day conference in Canada- a rich resource, couldn’t solve how to do it. Something like that will happen more and more. Large-scale access to other venues (via technology/teleconferencing/video/audio conferencing).

• Open more hours. When students need it they can go there. Open at 9; stay open to midnight, or 2-3 in the morning. Do we want to encourage it? Counter to adult circadian rhythms.
• A faculty club embedded J
• Get faculty there where students are
• What makes it attractive for faculty to be there?
• Will the spine connect Penfield to the student union? (Referring to the covered outside walkway, part of the Campus Center construction project). Not right away…

A&S Chairs

• Like the NYU library – the architecture incorporates a lot of empty space, but it’s inspiring, invites people to come in and interact with knowledge.  Sense of a special space.
• One problem with buildings on this campus is the architecture is depressing and not inviting.  New construction should avoid this.
• Adding skylight at top of stairwell helped the ambience, as did the library café.
• There’s a drive to create gathering spaces, but there has to be a place to get away, too.  People may go to the library to study looking for a place to be alone and find quiet.
• Our children seek interaction in their rooms, on their computers; maybe our desire for gathering places is generational.
• We need to find more ways of encouraging informal academic discussions.  Students enjoyed classes in café; this sort of space is useful for the sorts of informal discussions that can be fruitful.
• Ideally, it would be nice to be aesthetically pleasing, but if we’re moving toward a more virtual world, this meeting space could happen anywhere (Union, specifically designed buildings, etc.), so making this a priority for the library is not useful unless it’s tied in with its collections.  The tactile experience of physical research is meaningful to some.  We need to address different learning styles.

Provost’s Council

• An image based on the Lake Effect Café, Barnes & Noble, etc.  We have social needs to come together and talk about intellectual issues, to share ideas while using technology.  The communal sense of library will be important, not the individual process of retrieving a book.  There is something to be said for recreational information as well – browsing for informal intellectual activity or recreation.  Resource rooms could be set up around particular goals or exploring topics at leisure.
• It needs a faculty development center.  Information literacy will be increasingly important as we become “besieged by information” to figure out what to do with 70,000 Google hits on a topic, to know how to evaluate them to know which are worth paying attention to.
• Faculty and students alike need the quality control that the library collection historically had.  The selection process is important and will be in the online environment as well.
• There’s a growing need for common space for faculty to come together to deal with issues about learning environments and pedagogy.  To engage each other to talk about delivery systems for courses, etc., we need a physical space like the Faculty Development Center, and the library is a logical place for that to converge just as it is for students.
• There’s an unfortunate perception that students have that they don’t need to physically go to the library and talk to the librarians.  As a result, they lack critical assessment skills for the information they retrieve.
• Would like to see lectures and talks in the library, in a nice place along the lines of the formal lounge, a comfortable space for talks that would attract small, informal crowds.
• Retail space?  If library is going to do new and different things, perhaps it should sell books, or music, video, things related to books.  Becoming more entrepreneurial:  sell Lake Effect Café paraphernalia?
• Small theatre, viewing room?  If a student were assigned to review a film, a nice screening room would be good.

SOB

• Bricks and mortar library encourages browsing, virtual browsing may exist.
• Efficiency of space -- how can we
• Heavy emphasis on teams and collaborative learning—space needs to reflect that.
• Information processing place – not just leisure space, but not a silent space. 
• Library as space should be distributed on campus.  Information should be decentralized. Serve customer needs
• Flexible spaces, because we can’t have 20/20 vision about time in the future, not just word information but also a place to display art work, culture, etc.
• Library should be a place keeping alive a spirit of play, not a sterile place.
• A place to get out of the crowd—find a niche to hide out.
• Café is a nice area.

CTAB

• Not stacks.  More human, softer.
• Then library will become more of Meeting place. 
• Center of campus, Hub, a place to meet
• A comfortable place for research—currently not a place to feel comfortable.
• Intellectual hub of campus -- A place where academic research is valued and prized.
• Provides technology to those that cannot afford it.  Will tuition and financial aid cover cost of technology?
• Different kinds of spaces—large group, small group space, quiet space, expandable space, practice space
• Staff spaces and staff functions will need consideration.  Will they change?

COLT

• Easy to get to: parking, covered access in bad weather.
• Many kinds of spaces:  quite space, busy space, flexible space, social space, eating space, resource space.
• Special Physical collections-college history.
• Theater for video, formal lounge space for guest speakers, Barnes and Noble approach recreation and informal space.  Social interaction nature of learning.  Browsing space.   Social aspect of faculty research.  Online learning isolated-Collaborative learning

SOE

• A library used to be a storage place, so people interacted with shelves and books mainly by themselves.  The library will continue to move away from that, because the stored information is everywhere now.  Library structures the interactions now.
• What about the student who needs quiet and lives in a residence hall?
• Need spaces for individual students and small groups of students.
• Groups of faculty need spaces to interact as well.  Library is logical place for this.
• Library will be hub of the campus with various types of resource centers similar to the Teaching Resources Center.  We need these sorts of collaborative spaces.
• One-stop-shopping?  Integrate kiosks into the library for tech support and various other kinds of support.
• The café is a good example of a space that is conducive to the kinds of dialogue you’d want to support in the library.
• Need a transition plan to help support our multi-generational student body and faculty who come in at different stages.
• Can collaborative research by students and faculty be a focus?
• Expand the wireless café.

Academic Policies

• Cultural center (art gallery)
• Academic center (seminar rooms, tutoring center/ math/writing )
• Professional/ faculty center: spaces for interaction, intellectual engagement and conversations.
• Social center (relaxed atmosphere such as the café, meetings)
• A relevant place for research and building collections.
• Provide spaces for research (interdisciplinary)
• A place that defines who we are as a university and how we meet student’s expectations!

Graduate Council

• A place with multiple activities.
• Stacks should be removed to create space for meeting rooms, more technology, comfortable chairs (remove hard chairs and study carrels)
• A place to provide instant information at the same time provides the abilities to evaluate the vast amount of information for scholarly value.
• A social setting but also provides privacy opportunities for individuals who desire them.
• Some traditional aspects of the role of an academic library should remain so as not to recklessly lose our traditions!

SCAC

• The library should be a gathering place for scholars.
• It should include the proposed Faculty Development Center as a one-stop center with centralized staffing and integrated programs.
• Even at present, our students don’t read… doing away with bricks-and-mortar will only encourage students to work solely online.
• It could include a centralized exam room, so professors don’t have to waste class time on proctoring exams.
• It should have more screening rooms for videos faculty want to show for classes.
• It should include more conference rooms for cross-departmental meetings.
• It should include a large central space with open sight-lines; the open feeling increases the sense of an active space and promotes use.
• It needs cloistered spaces as well for the student living in the dorm to escape noise.
• It should be connected to the new student center to increase foot traffic.
• Aesthetics matter.  The physical qualities (rugs, décor, etc.) of the library speak volumes to the value the campus places on it.
• The library should be the academic campus center.
• It should include an innovative, technologically cutting-edge classroom facility where faculty can try new things in developing their courses.  Faculty need more opportunities to learn new technologies so they can use it in a way to improve learning in their courses.
• The library will need increased funds to retain access to commercial databases.
• It should be a central place to share successful/innovative teaching techniques.
• It should play the role of a center for interdisciplinary studies, where people from different disciplines can come together to work on projects.

Librarians

• Inviting!  Inspiring!

• Core/hub of the academic side of campus
• Desire of faculty & students for a place where they can find the resources they need and get help as needed
• Place to debate ideas
• One librarian mentioned that the comfortable seating that he and other students requested many years ago when he was a student at Oswego are still not here thirty years later
• Provide a variety of learning spaces and opportunities: space for cooperative or collaborative (“group”) learning (for large and small groups), private, quiet space.  Comfortable, aesthetically pleasing spaces:  niches and “cubbies” for those needing privacy, conference type space for groups.   At least one additional “smart” (technology equipped) classroom needs to be built, or perhaps a new wing to the building, due to the recent loss of academic space to a non-academic entity, and in order to adequately house all the services we “envision” as melding with the library of the future
• Need for more instruction rooms, and, in particular, a much larger instruction room to accommodate the many larger classes that regularly visit the library for instruction, or simply to work together
• Need to create flexible spaces – some that are technology rich and others that are technology free; need for both group and individual study areas; place for social work and private study; Group spaces should be of different sizes to accommodate different size groups; design of rooms should vary to attract different study practices
• Library as refuge away from noise of dorms
• Need for output, production equipment
• Some students feel that they don’t have to go to the Library anymore.  We need to better market who we are and what we do so that they understand that the need is still there
• Need to provide nice places for faculty and staff, as well as students
• Faculty Development Center (currently called CELT), the Writing Center: placement of these services in the library building would draw both faculty and students to the library, encouraging interaction, discussion and opportunities for learning outside of the formal classroom (in a neutral space).
• A social space, as well as an academic space. Anyone who thinks students will do everything virtually has not visited one of the campus dining areas recently.  Students have a need and desire to gather together, be it for social or academic reasons.  The two are often combined.  A trip to the library is a social event: they’re together as a group, but working through a class project at the same time
• The Library is a different kind of social space than the campus center;  we combine the social and the educational in our mission
• Space for students to practice presentations.
• A viewing room (for videos, DVDs or whatever the latest motion picture medium will be 15 years from now, but easily adapted to new technologies).
• A decent work environment for both library users & employees.  Natural light, heating, ventilation and air conditioning are serious issues that need to be dealt with.  These issues also affect the materials housed in the library – mold is currently a serious issue for both materials and possibly even employee health; Staff offices are also scattered throughout the building in a way that complicates collaborative work;  A staff conference room is a serious need
• Library should be interconnected with neighboring buildings
• Library could be a great lure for the community but not without parking; the Library should be “easy to get to”, particularly if you are carrying a heavy load of books;  we need some visitor parking
• Lots of infrastructure problems to be taken care of
• Better lighting needed in various areas

Acad. Quality

·   Chunk of the library should be devoted to a learning laboratory – a learning center devoted to individualized, non-remedial instruction to develop skills in writing, literacy/comprehension, etc., in students.  Trained tutors.  There are currently barriers to using the writing center, including the stigma of having to go there.  Could be used to work on online tutorials in a structured way using the help of a tutor.

·   Need more computer classrooms so students can learn information literacy skills hands-on.

         Library Support Staff

·   The third floor could use a lot of cosmetic improvement.  The study corners are not set up particularly well – the carrels need to go.  Study rooms need to be renovated.

·   Need to be better organized and efficient.  Move ILL to the front so students who only have a few minutes can get what they need quickly.

·   Reference Room:  get rid of study carrels in front of windows; replace with couches and plants.

·   The renovated TRC gets a tremendous amount of use.  Improving the aesthetics of the other study corners would likely really help use.

·   Get rid of the curtains – they’re ugly and detract from the aesthetics of the library.

·   Third floor isn’t set up in a user-friendly way, and there are no professional or even clerical staff to assist patrons there.

·   Phone strategically placed next to computers on third floor with a dedicated line to circ/ref?

·   Need spaces for students to practice presentations, work on creative projects together.

·   Students often ask for a drop box for campus mail.

·   If students are already in the building, we hate to send them away for a service that we could easily offer in-house.

3.       How will librarians serve students and faculty?  What services will be offered?  What skill sets will librarians bring?

Priorities & Planning

• Involved in information technology
• Show how to access information, organize information
• Ability to sort through information
• Need to help create data base structure to integrate—fields and subfields
• Learn search vocabulary to get focus on appropriate questions
• Librarians to help find resources in expanding interlibrary loan system
• Worry about budget—may need more improvisation
• SUNY needs to bargain for all campuses—competition
• Students need not confuse instant gratification with quality information
• Need a variety of librarians with various skills (technology, funding info)—a team of skill sets—skills and understanding will shift—may short term people rolled over as new skills needed
• Flexible and willing to learn new
• Teachers

Faculty Assembly Executive Council

• Let me present a contrarian view…I see already that librarians are conceiving…themselves as information technologists, and that’s great- that’s a part of where libraries are going and what we’re talking about today. However, would like them not to forget that the media of the book, however it is presented to us, whether paper or electronic, is still a book, and to continue to think in the categories that they have in the past, with a love of the book, as opposed to merely as a medium of presenting info. Concern about books’ condition.
• Will include a larger amount of “vending” selling off holdings. Process has been done without adequate consult with faculty. If involved with depts. As liaisons, when/why/how of dispersal has to be done working with faculty. Priceless, appropriate to be kept books have been sold. Many, many more dispersed to the universe. Something poisonous done to the library – that we call attention to participation in evaluating items that are pulled off the shelf.
• 2020 is not a point where we won’t be worrying about this,
• We have to begin right away to establish procedures to begin evaluation
• What makes great university are great libraries. More that just access to relevant databases…hope there’s a dialog that begins about deaccessioning.
• Library shares these concerns; might depend on your liaison.
• Most know about journals, not consulted on books.
• Don’t realize what librarians do…how many tenure track do we have? 13. Don’t know what some of them do... (it’s) hard to say what the role of librarians is, when we don’t know them today.
• Maybe come out of offices, be housed in the core of the library. Might have a librarian assigned to a dept, be part of the dept faculty, come to meetings, etc. would strengthen the partnership, strengthen instruction to students.
• Students don’t use library well, we don’t have time to instruct
• Some classes are designed around library instruction; Comm Studies has 2 librarians involved in assisting. Only 2 who know how to use law library resources. Need a broad discussion on the academic capabilities of the library to service all needs.

A&S Chairs

• We already have virtual librarians – telephone, e-mail, chat reference.
• Students will need more help with information literacy.  Formerly there was built-in quality control in the information available because the library was the only source and if a journal, book made it to the library, it was reputable.  Now library material is seen as equal to web information, and librarians (and faculty) must be able to help students evaluate effectively.
• Librarians were formerly information gatekeepers; that’s going to be increasingly important as students don’t differentiate between reputable and irreputable information.

Provost’s Council

• Providing training and development will increase, and more sophisticated technology will be used.  Librarians will be teachers and professors of information and librarianship even more so than they already are.  They will teach ease of use and manipulation of resources.
• The algorithms underlying search engines calculate hundreds of thousands of transactions based on what they know about the user.  This could be applied in the library environment:  if this student is a biology student, these variables will be applied in any search they run.   Technology will act as filter with librarians managing it.  Still will need reference librarians, ILL, instructional librarians.
• Librarians will increasingly work with departments to develop skills in information literacy and academic integrity.  As information becomes easier to find, the nature of academic integrity will play a bigger role, and librarians understand these issues and can play this role.  They will be the key players in this role rather than departmental faculty, because faculty don’t get this training in their graduate education.

SOB

• Not sure what librarians do now.  Storing information and retrieving it.
• Time spent maintaining technology?
• Business will continue to bring the gateway students into the Library for help with research.
• Librarians will be expert filterers of information, making things accessible, maintaining gateways for accessibility.
• Faculty will initiate service request – librarians will provide service transaction. 
• Librarians will do more outreach to faculty, what’s new or accessible.
• New faculty may make information portal.  Maybe library should control campus web site.
• Staff a virtual library chat room.
• Helping faculty and students find information quickly will be important.
• Librarians will develop pedagogy – a business librarian, science librarian

CTAB

• Librarians will help accessing material – may be within the confines of the building or external staff locations
• Educause student report just published may provide information.
• Technology is not the main question -- freshman are freshman, scholarship is scholarship
• Helping students differentiate between data and knowledge and wisdom.
• Librarians will be more involved with departments.
• Cost of information may change; may be priced per search, will be a drag on budget.
• Driven by end user needs—early adopters, ubiquitous computer, data storage

COLT

• Guide,
• Evaluating information –
• Evaluating sources –
• Developing search skills and teaching those, like a physicist mind, like a shopper, teaching skills, a part of every class, shared responsibility
• By 2020, student skills will be savvy with technology, but not information evaluation
• Cooperation between faculty to librarians

SOE

• Key role of librarian is to separate good information from bad and teaching those evaluative skills to students.
• Librarians should help students critically review information sources.
• Help support the idea that students need to do their own work – teach academic integrity.
• For some students, the librarian doesn’t exist; they only interact with the internet.  How can the library insert its presence into that sort of “research” situation?
• Work with faculty in a particular discipline to identify sources that are likely to be most fruitful for their classroom needs.

Academic Policies

• Credentialed in specific disciplines
• Integrated within the faculty to provide research support to students and faculty continuously.
• Sustained conversations regarding the integration of librarians with teaching faculty.
• Collaborative activities to support students and faculty research.
• Provide technical advisement with information retrieval but also evaluate the information for scholarship worth.
• Provide a human face in the vast technological space.
• Encourage interaction in the social places as they provide expertise.
• Interesting people to interact with and do collaborative/ interdisciplinary work!
• Help lessen anxieties such as solitude “safe and quiet place” where people can have space to think!

Graduate Council

• Librarians should go to the people rather than wait for people to come to them. Faculties teaching distance learners in out of campus sites should be able to bring library faculties in their classrooms.
• Librarians should be part of the instructional faculties attached to each department in an integrated seamless way.
• Even with all available technology, librarians should be able to provide the “human fingers” out of this technological center.
• Should have the skills and abilities not just to provide access to information but to evaluate it for scholarly value and to continually help faculty and students to know other related sources.
• Use the “Amazon” approach to help faculty and students know what else is available to support their research.
• Because of the information explosion, librarians should vet the materials and assign some codes such “red, yellow and green” for materials that can be used.
• As technology becomes sophisticated, librarians should have advanced skills for technology.

SCAC

• Librarians must educate students on how to effectively use the web to find that good information that is freely available online.
• The function of librarians won’t essentially change; their role is to help the layman (non-librarian) access the library’s content.
• They will have an increased teaching function – students (and faculty) need help to find, evaluate, and present information in the age of information overload.
• Librarians will continue to be gatekeepers of information.  This role is doubly important with the proliferation of online information.
• The library needs to offer students writing assistance – this will increase as students do more research-level papers.  The Writing Center currently comes with a stigma.  Maybe integrating this into library services could combat this.  Other tutoring services could also be integrated.
• The library should assist faculty with technology – currently there is a decentralized model that includes the tech helpline, CTS, etc.  Perhaps as part of the Faculty Development Center?

Librarians

• Future is in instruction – teaching students and faculty to find information and use technology successfully
• We used to assume that students would use books, whatever their field.  We can no longer assumer this; Need to understand how disciplines work as a whole
• As the rate of information growth increases, the need for help navigating ways through the maze increases
• Need to help others find and evaluate information will continue and grow
• Teaching people to identify “relevant” information
• Librarians will continue to build collections that reflect materials of high quality, whether print, electronic or some other format;  Librarians must be ready to deal with the constant regeneration of knowledge into new formats
• Librarians are beginning to help people better find info. by including such things as Table of Contents in records
• Librarians have the good fortune of being able to provide students with assistance at the “point of need”.   We catch students in one-on-one situations as they are working on projects and papers
• It takes ever more time and effort to identify and pull the good information from the bad
• Librarians are finally beginning to be recognized as the teachers (“professors of information,” as one person put it) that they are and always have been.  This will continue to grow
• Information literacy guides, especially to help with the access to and evaluation of information for both faculty and students, and to use information legally and ethically.
• Assist with technology in close cooperation with campus technology services – an “Information Commons” type environment, with librarians handling the academic/reference type queries, and some technical questions, with more advanced technical questions being fielded by campus technology services
• Librarians need to develop more technical skills to support students
• Libraries need to market their values better

Acad. Quality

·   More should be done with information literacy, plagiarism prevention, etc.  Faculty vary widely in their understanding of plagiarism and ability to deal with it effectively in their courses and need instruction as well.

·   Would like to see students continue to use physical books.  Function of the reference librarian is key in keeping a lifeline to the book collection.  Librarians need to continue to improve access to the book collection.

·   Usability of online services need to be improved to be more user-friendly.  Main catalog page is infuriating to use – doesn’t easily pull up the results you want, even when you know what you want.  SFX isn’t perfect either.  “Determine if a Journal Title is Available” doesn’t start with the key word.

·   More specialization in library staff?

·   Departments feel frustration with collection development with losing journals due to under-use; they absolutely rely on bibliographic access through expensive databases and are worried about losing them.

Library Support Staff

·   Students are going to need more and better copy services for presentations.  There’s a real need to do transparencies, color copies, scanning, etc.

·   If you want to portray yourself as the hub, you need to offer the “little things” in terms of services.

·   Need more education for circulation and other public services staff in order to keep pace with technology; for really simple technology questions, shouldn’t have to send an impatient patron to reference and waste their time.

·   If you’re already comfortable with a number of software packages that you use a lot for your work, you may not want to learn a lot of new ones that aren’t related to your expertise.  We don’t want all staff to have to learn all software packages that may be useful to have expertise available in the library; specializing would be much more manageable.

4.   What values will the library reflect?

Priorities & Planning

·         Open access to information

·         Hope

·         Values of the academy—symbolize, intellectual curiosity, growth, development, individual thinking, critical, informed inquiry

Faculty Assembly Executive Council

• Like valuing knowledge? To value and instruct in the desirability of knowledge, seeking new knowledge, protecting knowledge, (encouraging) rational/critical thinking vs. happenstance/mindless acceptance. Research vs. whim

A&S Chairs

• Open/free inquiry.
• Density of people is important to avoid following the example of the University of Phoenix.
• We need help dealing with a wide range of qualities of information:  public/private, copyright, etc.  Legal department?
• Media scholars/experts.  Books do many things well that can’t easily be translated into other media.
• Computer scientists/programmers.
• Library needs to be the academic campus center; it should be large and imposing to compete with the hockey rink.
• It needs to promote an international dimension, not ethnocentric.
• One aspect should be providing an encounter with the wisdom of the past.

Provost’s Council

• The anti-Fahrenheit 451:  the library is the university hub; a place, but also an idea.  Library will have librarians, but also technology to intervene.
• Integrity, knowledge, ethics
• Declining use of the library: why do people go to a university library?  What do we market about the resources there?  Program development is crucial.
• Enduring nature of knowledge.  History of knowledge building on knowledge.
• Intellectual/academic integrity.  Tradition.
• Globalization and internationalization.  Library technology will take us to translated information from that international perspective.
• Media will change.  Hard to know what will be available instantaneously; will we be able to get to research before it’s published, directly from the researcher in the lab.
• Professionalizing access to the sea of knowledge.  The vetting process has evaporated.  Formerly, libraries were “sacred repositories”, the accumulated knowledge of a people.  Now, the explosion in the opposite direction has made it difficult to discriminate between what’s credible and what isn’t.  Libraries will play a critical role in the vetting process.

SOB

• Quiet - Students in dorms, need place to study.
• Openness
• Accessibility to information
• Multiple points of view
• Teach how to apply changes

·         Spirit of inquisitiveness

• Deal with change
• Knowing how to find an answer, not the answer.

      CTAB

            No response

      COLT

            Did not have time to discuss

SOE

• Evaluation and selection of high-quality information; providing spaces for ad hoc groups to form.
• Academic honesty.
• High-speed access to information is expected and comes with a sense of entitlement; teaching that accessing information is still a human interaction and the service workers who provide it deserve respect.
• Advocacy in influencing vendors of databases to make them more user-friendly and provide better-quality results.  If you can tell based on the search strategy that something isn’t an effective search, advocate with vendors to provide some search-improvement help.

Academic Policies

• Knowledge: free and open access
• Democratic society in higher education

Graduate Council

• Classical tradition
• Intellectual center
• Center of knowledge
• A source of assistance
• Multi-purpose: collaborative research, group work, seminars, extension of the classroom “square of the little town”.
• Intellectual discourse
• Place for research
• Inspirational
• Cultural center (art gallery, concerts, visiting guests, visiting professors)
• Cultural encounters
• Archive building structure of knowledge

SCAC

• The values won’t change; the technology will change.
• Openness; access.

Librarians

• Learning; curiosity
• Quality; democracy (offer free information access to all)
• Strong service ethic
• Meet users at point of need
• Place to be on campus if not in class or dorm room
• Place for collaboration
• Place to fight frustrations; find help when frustrated
• Value of civility; place to come together to learn about & discuss all different points of view in an atmosphere of mutual respect;  Libraries should reflect varying points of view/all sides of an issue
• The library will promote, encourage and support: learning, intellectual curiosity, thinking, the value of working together in groups as well as alone, democracy, equality, privacy, cooperation, differing viewpoints, civility (for all learners: SUNY Oswego students, faculty and staff, the greater Oswego community, and the wider community)
• Protection of civil liberties, i.e. privacy and freedom to read all points of view
• Involvement of library in issues of academic honesty; ethics of information use
• Place to venture out and discover new knowledge; place to learn to deal with ambiguity
• Preservation of information for future generations
• Must do a better job in the classroom of letting students know that information older than just a few years still has value.  In some fields of study, the older information may well continue to be the best information yet available on a topic
• Need for centralized storage within SUNY for older materials that are not used often;  Libraries can no longer afford the luxury of maintaining these materials on-site
• Need for librarians and faculty to work together to put pressure on publishers regarding access to current issues of electronic journals at a reasonable price
• Collaboration at every level, i.e. with students, faculty

Library Support Staff

·         Comfort – non-judgmental help and reassurance for students with their research and studies.

·         We’ll need to change our definition of our patrons with Universal Borrowing; in a way the library will need to consider students from other SUNY campuses as our own too.

·         High standard of personal service.

·         Reliable information.

5.   What other ideas about the library of 2020 do you want to share?  Is there anything you do not want the library to be or do?

Priorities & Planning

• Does it need exhibition space?  Is this role of library?  Really should be coordinated with departments
• Where do things belong?  Duplication at library?  Who does this (publications)?
• Not over-centralization of decisions, i.e. whether or not print
• Galleries good—get more learning space—should collaborate with art dept. which has limited opportunity
• Should not close—24/7 student still working all the time.  Access to information always.

Faculty Assembly Executive Council

• Removing things; lots of journals in moldy basement – better storage, a storage plan.
• If lib is to listen to these comments, in particular our concern about removing books. Reason given is running out of space - there’s the irony of shoving the radio station into the space where space is already too small. Over next 15 years – open up more space if books are still considered valuable vs. throwing them away or growing mold.
• Values – a value structure is a respect for the future which acknowledges its dependency on the past. A basic value which I would aspire to.
• Move to the future; students being able to access state of the art info that is timely, plus historic material. Vigilance needed to protect materials and protect library as a PLACE. Not to lose that location as a place for people to come together
• Would it make sense to have a Faculty development space in the library? This generated a universal NO from the group….
• Take radio station out at first opportunity. May be room for an addition. Spanning between Lanigan and Penfield.
• More and more info available, do a better job of conveying how to evaluate what’s worthwhile and what’s not. Librarians to play a major role in that.
• Some culling of English library to occur (related to move)

A&S Chairs

• Centralization is financially inevitable in a system like SUNY’s.  How will that impact us?

Provost’s Council

• The library should be more of a gathering place for faculty.  We need a Greek forum where groups of faculty can come together around ideas.  Need space for speakers to address a small audience, where faculty can congregate.
• Students need a place to come together and share.  Students already do, and they’d do so even more if there were better spaces.
• Librarians should not be the defenders of physical materials from the students.

SOB

• Not a sterile place.
• I don’t want it to close.  I want it to serve 24/7.

CTAB

• Market place will drive the services and online collections available to library. 
• Library will be/should be center for pedagogy
• Books will be on CD, printing costs passed on to the end user

COLT

• Not just a place to search, but to produce something. 
• Technology will be departmentalized. 
• Faculty have to teach how to write a good paper.  Logical reasoning is important, not just be wowed by technology or the web. 

SOE

• Level of connectedness that students and faculty feel to the library is critical.  Need a good balance between quiet spaces and noise-friendly spaces.
• Cultivating relationships with groups like Living and Learning Committee is important.
• Librarians, library kiosks in the residence halls?  More remote librarians?  These sorts of connections could be crucial.  A lot of students are doing their work from their rooms.

Academic Policies

• Information literacy skills
• Cultivate important skills: analytical, critical, research, evaluative.
• Professional development: research skills for junior faculty
• Source of important intellectual questions
• A place for faculty conversation, debates of important issues, a collective space for substantive conversations.
• Repository of regional special collections
• Shared resources with community and other libraries
• Potential library studies for k-12 librarians.

Graduate Council

• Not a place for cell phones and curses
• Maintain the decorum and dignity of the institution
• Should represent the best of who we are as an institution
• Opportunities provided for quiet places with no distraction.. kind of organized noise.
• Adjust learning/acquiring knowledge for the net generation
• Different approaches to learning
• Acknowledge the shifting roles from information retrieval/discovery to evaluation of information, sorting out and distinguishing what is knowledge.
• Ensure knowledge accessibility
• Provide necessary technology: digitizing, printing, copiers etc.

SCAC

• Don’t want the library to close, ever.  24/7 access, or at least to the extent possible, as much of the library should be open as much of the time as possible.
• The library currently offers some virtual (phone, e-mail, chat) reference assistance, but these should be extended as well.

Librarians

• Teaching/Information Literacy are at the heart of the services we provide
• Everything mentioned above hinges on a viable, reasonable and reliable budget – year after year.
• Other departments or offices should *not* be thrown into the library in a willy-nilly fashion.  If there is no connection to direct academics (teaching and learning), it should not be housed in the library.
• College Archives have not been mentioned yet.  To preserve the history of the College, and local history, special attention should be given to this area.  Another personnel line should be devoted to archives and special collections.
• Some mention has been made that the College library should provide more in terms of pleasure reading.  The College library’s primary purpose is to collect in the areas of academic disciplines and studies.  The public library’s primary purpose is to collect for general reference and pleasure reading.  For those wanting more pleasure reading, perhaps it would behoove them to support their own local public library, rather than have the College library spend its limited collection budget on this type of material. We already do, when possible, purchase some pleasure reading materials, and collect more via donations
• The major portion of library budget does certainly go to curriculum support, however, given our mission as an institution where large portions of our student body live on campus, we do view part of our mission to provide some pleasure reading, viewing, listening resources;  These materials play a big role in bringing students into the library and encouraging a positive view of the library as a good place to be when the dorms are noisy
• Issues of academic honesty with continue to grow.  We see librarian involvement here
• Internationalization/globalization of information is having an impact on libraries; Libraries as “connectors to the world”
•  Librarians need to be more entrepreneurial in generating both one-time and continuing revenue stream
• Some services may become more decentralized around campus

Library Support Staff

·   Don’t want to lose the importance of physical books.

·   Don’t want to lose the personal touch to “here’s the computer, here’s the database.”

·   Would be naïve for libraries to ditch printed materials in favor of technology that obsolesces so quickly.