Among Friends

Some Friends of the Library members have mentioned to me that they have heard the Library is in the process of reorganizing and have asked me for more information. I am happy to update the Friends on progress we have made toward creating a 21st century organization to guide the Library's mission of providing world class research materials to Brown students and faculty.

Many metaphors can be applied to the Brown University Library and how crucial it is to academic discovery. One often used is of the Library as a laboratory for learning, where scholars find, digest and build upon the research materials found here to take new leaps in thinking. Research materials are critical to academic excellence, but so are the research specialists - librarians who do such a fine job of connecting scholars with the right materials for their research. The Library is both a springboard for undergraduate learning and a secure repository for the end product of advanced research - to apply another metaphor, one could say that the Library serves as the tangible symbol of knowledge's "life cycle."

Because what the Library does is so critical, our organization must empower Library staff to do their very best to serve Brown's students and faculty. In evaluating our effectiveness, we have discovered that we need to change the way we work. Today's Library is organized around physical things - tracking a book from ordering to cataloging to shelving, and providing assistance inside the Library buildings. However, our current structure does not account for the new and ever-changing media that comprise the Library's increasing electronic collections - and that transform the way our users make use of the Library. For example, a student no longer has to come to one of the Library buildings to read certain journals - as many are now available electronically and accessible from a home computer.

As our collections and users change, our staff needs to have more interaction with students and faculty to help them navigate the ever more complex Library environment - both traditional and digital. We need to have more one-on-one consultation with faculty and graduate students, both to stay on top of swiftly evolving user needs and to assist in the development of digital tools and content for the classroom. Our aim is to transform our operations to facilitate this more sophisticated level of service. To achieve this, the Library has been engaged in an intensive research and evaluation process to reorganize the way we work.

In the new organizational structure that the Library will implement this year, staff will work collaboratively in 11 different "service groups" designed to deliver particular outcomes for the user. The mission of each group is to create a direct benefit that users will enjoy; these include:

• Expanded stewardship of research materials for specific disciplines.
• Strengthened relationships with faculty to best select curricular resources.
• Improved user education to allow more self-sufficiency, both on-site and electronically.
• Enhanced preservation and storage of research materials.
• More options for borrowing from other libraries.
• New materials added to the collections and updated descriptions of new resources.
• Improved support of multimedia curricular resources, including support for the use of multimedia technology in teaching and learning.
• Advanced resources for digital scholarship and research.
• Strengthened management of library buildings and information technology. Better communication about - and evaluation of - Library services.

With these changes, our Library has the potential to do even more than it does today to advance academic excellence and global scholarship. Library staff will engage in more direct partnerships with faculty and students and will help apply new information and multimedia technologies to teaching, learning, and scholarship. We are pleased with the progress we have made to change the way we serve the needs of Library users and appreciate the thoughtful comments that faculty and students have shared. Our new plan will be phased in during the next several months as staff transition to new roles and complete training.

If you have questions about the reorganization, please contact Raynna Bowlby, Organizational & Staff Development Officer, via e-mail at Raynna_Bowlby@Brown.edu or via phone at (401) 863-3181.