Strategic Emphases for 2008-09

Looking forward to the future, LIS seeks to align our goals and priorities with the broader initiatives of Luther College. The following list of strategic emphases have been identified as critical for LIS in the coming years.

Expansion of Information Literacy, Fluency and Training Initiatives

We believe that in our information-based economy, learning critical information literacy skills in college is an integral piece to a 21st century liberal arts education. Our graduates need to have consistent and intentional instruction on critical evaluation and use of information sources and resources in order to function successfully in business and in life. Previous generations of students and employees have relied upon the publishing industry to serve as arbiters of quality information. The digital age makes understanding information and its proper use the responsibility of the end user.

Information “fluency” implies not only the skills necessary to interpret information, but also the accompanying technology skills to use information technology effectively, and the ability to effectively communicate information in meaningful ways. We believe that Luther graduates should have strong skills in information research, critical analysis, and technology as they enter the workforce. We believe faculty and administrators overestimate the technology fluency of our students, and we seek to expand our technology training opportunities for students.

LIS seeks to expand our information fluency programs by partnering more deeply with faculty across the curriculum and expanding our commitments to provide this service to the College. Additional emphasis on this priority and focused resources in this area will promote this. This is an initiative where Luther can distinguish itself among our competitor institutions.

Expansion of Academic Technology Support

The role of technology in education continues to grow significantly and the technology demands and responsibilities being placed on our faculty are growing. Over the last fifteen years, most schools like Luther have developed teams of instructional technologists who partner with faculty to support and engage them in using appropriate technology in their classrooms. We currently have one faculty position in the library with the responsibility of coordinating all academic technology initiatives, with an additional 1.5 staff FTE devoted to general computer labs and our course management system. While this gives us broad coverage, it does not afford us the opportunity to truly support faculty who seek to innovate. We see multimedia technologies becoming critically important in the future in the classroom as faculty want to create and use more digital multimedia to record courses, connect virtually with others off-campus, and encourage authoring scholarly content in multimedia. Our faculty also need more support for departmentally-focused computer labs, which currently are not supported or replaced appropriately by LIS or the departments, and are critical to curricula across the College. Our recent MISO survey of faculty and students does illustrate a general weakness in this area for Luther.

While further investment in Academic Technology support at Luther will have a direct and meaningful impact on the ability of Luther faculty, students, and the curriculum to stay technologically current, it will also help provide the infrastructure needed to support more innovative uses of our academic content for our extended alumni community. Additional multimedia infrastructure and support will allow us to make interactive content more broadly available via the Internet, to engage those away from Luther in the intellectual and cultural life here. By investing in our multimedia and classroom technology infrastructure and support, we can realize significant new capabilities to serving our local and extended communities.

Focus on Web-Based Delivery of Services

We seek to push Luther to innovate in the area of web delivery of services. The Internet brings unparalleled opportunities to provide on-demand information-based services. We feel Luther should invest in prioritizing web-based services to serve both the local and extended communities. This includes implementation of new and expanded portals/virtual communities for students, employees, and alumni. LIS is currently reconfiguring staffing in our programming resources to focus more effort in this area, though we are hampered by the volume and complexity of these systems. We believe that additional investment and commitment of resources in LIS and elsewhere are important to growing this initiative.

It is clear that if we are truly to engage our extended community of alumni and friends internationally, the Internet will be a central tool to accomplishing this. We seek to identify or develop innovative and meaningful web-based tools to enable more effective delivery of academic resources for our faculty and students, and to connect our alumni and friends to the vibrant intellectual and cultural community of the College.

Focus on Communication

As an institution, we need to be smarter about what and how we communicate. LIS provides an excellent case study of this issue. The services provided by LIS are complex and broad, and just maintaining internal communication regarding our services is a challenge in and of itself. Communicating the possibilities and opportunities available through services provided by LIS to our users is even more difficult. At the same time we want to provide a clearer and more effective message for our users, we also do not want to add to the communication noise of their daily lives.

LIS seeks to be intentional about designing and conforming to a communications plan with the campus that enhances information flow in a controlled and manageable way. We hope that this can foster and support additional conversations across campus to help manage and guide communication to make it more effective.

Expanded Commitment to Network Security

As network-borne threats continue to change and evolve, we must continually reevaluate our risks and exposures while working to ensure a secure and well-functioning data network. Network security will be an area that LIS will continue to devote more and more time and effort to over the coming years, and the liabilities for not doing so will grow as well. Many institutions of our size have designated specific network security personnel to be responsible for strategic and day-to-day network security duties. This is a direction that Luther should be considering as well. Providing dedicated resources to defend against these sorts of events is often the best insurance policy we put in place.

In order for our local and extended communities to know and trust our remote services, we should demonstrate a strong commitment to network security, privacy, and data stewardship, so that our constituents can feel comfortable networking with us.

Expansion of LIS Services to Alumni

As Luther seeks to create a stronger and more intentional community inclusive of alumni, LIS will need to reevaluate how we can use technology to connect geographically diverse populations into a strong Luther-centric virtual community. Historically, LIS has appropriately focused support efforts on campus-based constituents as primary consumers of information services. Because technology provides many of the avenues to best connect with our alumni body, LIS should develop a leading role in connecting those remote to our campus with our campus community. This will involve expansion of virtual communities, directories, email services, and multimedia delivery of content from campus.

An emphasis on this service is emerging through the broad Luther strategic planning process and should be carried forward in the coming years.

Pursuit of Expanded Consortial Relationships

A principle coping mechanism for colleges and universities facing rising costs in both library and technology arenas has been to band together with similar institutions to gain benefit through greater purchasing power and access to expanded collections. Historically, Luther has not developed strong consortial ties with regional institutions, which has resulted in the institution having access to fewer resources than some other similar schools, and maintaining higher operating costs for some functions necessary for enterprise information support operations. Lack of consortial relationships also significantly affects training and professional development opportunities available to Luther faculty and staff.

LIS seeks to engage similar regional schools to gain broader networks of academic resources to support our work. While we may be competitors with other regional schools in some realms, for information service and support, consortial arrangements are win-win for everyone in keeping costs manageable while expanding available resources.

Expansion of Services for Mobile Technologies

Technology is moving mobile and with the now emergent viable mobile devices combining web, chat, email, and voice communications, Luther should focus some effort to make services available via mobile and portable technologies. While this encompasses a need for designing network-based services that can be used efficiently via mobile devices, it also includes a recognition of a broad move toward deployment of mobile technologies and hardware for employees and students (more laptops and mobile devices). Over time, we see a laptop or other portable computing device being the primary device for nearly all Luther employees and students. Our infrastructure will need to evolve to support this mobile world. We may also need to work closely with third-party mobile network and technology providers to ensure that appropriate infrastructure exists in Decorah and on our campus.