Description: Today’s comprehensive polytechnic education requires a comprehensive and multiple literacies approach to information literacy. Data, digital, visual, numeric, and primary source literacies are all parts of information literacy. Support for developing these literacies across the curriculum is central to delivering on this strategic outcome. A comprehensive and effective program will require curricular mapping and attention to both foundational and capstone experiences. A sustainable program will require ongoing collaborations with campus partners and include online delivery and delivery through mixed library staffing across all library departments, with graduate assistants and peer student assistants playing critical roles.

Major milestones & timeline:

• 2016-2017:  Participate in campus Information Literacy assessment for WASC self-study
• 2019-2020:  Assess library’s contribution to information literacy and multiple literacies of Cal Poly students

Description: Students at Cal Poly are closely identified with a particular college and department from the day they apply for admission. With rigorous departmental degree requirements, many students hunger for opportunities to interact with students in other programs and colleges. The comprehensive polytechnic experience, with its emphasis on whole systems thinking, benefits from such interaction and exposure. Industry and professions highly value Cal Poly graduates who are skilled at working across disciplinary and professional boundaries, translating the language of engineers into that of architects, or understanding the ethical dimensions of business decisions. At the same time they value students with the abilities to communicate and interact with diverse populations and cultures. The library is a natural meeting point and hub for students across all colleges and cultures. We want to add resources, tools, and opportunities for students to make both serendipitous and intentional connections that cross college and cultural boundaries.

Major milestones & timeline:

• 2015-2017: Create program of graduate student networking and support services in collaboration with Graduate Education Office
• 2015-2017:  Complete Phase I of Peer Learning Zone (Master Plan, first floor)

Description: Our faculty is drawn to work at Cal Poly by our polytechnic environment, and by the value they place on collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. With intense teaching and service commitments, our faculty often achieve the greatest success in research and creative activities through collaboration, whether at Cal Poly or with colleagues from other universities or industry. This program represents the library’s commitment to making it easier for faculty to make those critical connections: as new members of the Cal Poly faculty and as established faculty with strong motivation to look for new perspectives or complementary expertise.

Major milestones & timeline:

• 2017-2019:   Assess campus needs and develop services that support researchers across disciplines.

Description: A challenge at all universities, even a polytechnic, is creating sustained formal and informal frameworks and strategies that foster interdisciplinary learning and research. Many of Cal Poly’s curricular programs are innately interdisciplinary; and programs that cross college boundaries are thriving despite bureaucratic and policy challenges. The library as a neutral academic hub can help incubate, provide space for, and bring attention to initiatives such as Science, Technology and Society – a program emerging in CLA that ideally is not bounded by minors or degrees but can be integrated and infused across all colleges. Design thinking, data visualization, digital humanities, and systems sciences are examples of potentially interdisciplinary practices the library can help promote. STEAM (bringing arts into STEM and vice versa) is another movement that the library can contribute to and embody, through practices such as bringing GIS and archival studies together in our Special Collections and Archives programs. Interdisciplinary approaches to learning and problem solving may also form an important focus for library instruction. Campus experiments and innovations in developing GE “paths” could provide opportunities for partnership by the library in creating attractive polytechnic foundational experiences for all Cal Poly students.

Major milestones and timeline:

• 2016-2019:  Publish a multi-modal Cal Poly STEAM journal.

Description: The democratization of information is one of the most extraordinary developments of our time, feeding an explosive and rich culture of innovation and diversity. Yet our time is also characterized by paywalls that hinder many from having access to specialized research and professional information, and increasing costs to students of textbooks that are vital to their learning. A digital divide continues to impact students of lower socio-economic status. Language, stereotypes, and assumptions still prevalent in our culture can also negatively affect student success. Libraries are ‘equalizers’ in the information landscape, and they play this role in universities as well as society at large. Kennedy Library’s commitment is to work continually with faculty and students to minimize barriers of all kinds to information and technology, to establish and cultivate an environment that reduces social and economic barriers to student success, and to contribute substantially to the increased democratization of information both through advocacy and through direct contributions to open access and open culture.

Major outcomes & milestones:

• 2015-2016: Establish new Coordinating Committee on Inclusivity and Diversity and integrate campus strategic inclusivity goals into every library department.
• 2016-2017: Support department-wide adoption of an open textbook in at least one department offering gateway STEM courses.

Description: Kennedy Library is transforming to meet the needs of our users in an era of profound change in the provisioning, delivery, discovery, and use of information resources. To that end, we will re-purpose spaces previously devoted to the housing of print materials. Access to scholarly content is now predominantly electronic, mobile, and ubiquitous, thereby obviating the need for large historic print collections. That being said, tomorrow’s Cal Poly library will retain many of the most cherished characteristics of libraries, including a welcoming and safe environment, interactive social spaces, and space devoted to print collections. These will include areas for recreational reading as well as for discovery and use of legacy print collections. The library’s Special Collections and Archives collections will likewise increasingly consist of digital items including emails, digital files and even software; and physical artifacts will be shared through digital surrogates. At the same time, we will improve stewardship and access to special and unique physical artifacts. For all library collections, our guiding principle will be to expand opportunities for our students and researchers to benefit from their exposure and work with these resources, whether through thoughtful programming, or improved interfaces and conditions for physical and digital access and discovery.

Major outcomes & milestones:

• 2015-2016: Complete Phase 1 of collections storage plan for Special Collections & Archives: create first environmentally conditioned high-density storage vault
  
• 2015-2017: Migrate to ExLibris’ Alma, new CSU-wide integrated library system
• 2017-2019: Fully realize 2015 vision for balancing and blending digital and print collections

Description: Powerful new platforms are emerging to support libraries in managing user expectations, new workflows, and the growing diversity and increased volume of digital objects.  The corollary challenges of digital preservation require scalable and sustainable solutions.  At the same time, digital content opens up the cultural and research record for new scholarly uses and applications, and radically increases both academic and citizen access to previously inaccessible content. New information architecture was planned and piloted in 2014-2015.  The long-term outcomes of this information architecture will include new ways to work collaboratively, conduct research, and engage students in scholarship and discovery, while establishing a vital documentary record of Cal Poly’s contributions and activities for future scholars.

Major outcomes & milestones:

• 2015-2016:  Complete migration to Islandora (Digital Asset Management System)
• 2016-2017: Fully implement sustainable digital preservation program

Description: At a Learn by Doing institution, the opportunity to make things – whether digital or tangible or both – is a crucial part of the learning experience. It is also a critical experience for Cal Poly students who are preparing for work in industries and organizations that thrive on design, teamwork, experimentation, and entrepreneurship. The library can offer spaces and experiences outside the classroom where students across all departments can tinker with digital audio, 3D printing and modeling, immersive digital experiences, and more.

Description: Digital natives demand fast and intuitive products and services with technology and social media playing key roles in their lives. Users expect to understand digital interfaces intuitively and are intolerant of steep learning curves. Stable, fast, user-friendly online user experiences are a necessary part of our support for users solving academic and real-world problems. Responsive digital user experiences (UX) increase our capacity for discovery and productivity, while enhanced discovery of library-provisioned resources is key to success in student and faculty scholarship and research. Providing ubiquitous and speedy access to provisioned technologies is at the center of the polytechnic approach to teaching and learning. Effective digital communications facilitate the use of both digital and physical resources in the library. With personalization as a goal, the library is committed to providing rapid, flexible, and user-configurable services across our integrated library systems. Digital access to data, access to digital images, streaming media, and tools to manage and interact with digital textual resources, are critical elements of the total digital experience.

Major outcomes & milestones:

• 2015-2016: Implement VDI to deliver high-end software and increase flexibility of response to ad hoc software needs for instruction in the library (9)

Description: High academic standards and expectations and overwhelming choices and decisions increase the need of students for spaces that meet a variety of needs, allowing them to focus, work in collaboration with others, restore their energy and motivation, and make informed choices in a world where academic experiences and research strategies are new and confusing. To deliver the best possible user experiences, the library intentionally designs spaces that are human-centered and balance the many competing needs of the campus. Spaces that encourage engagement, entertainment, experimentation as well as refreshment and relaxation are critical contributions to the Learn by Doing experiences that characterize Cal Poly’s polytechnic culture. Clear way-finding, easy access to resources, technologies and user spaces, and the ability of users to reconfigure and adapt our physical spaces to their needs are critical services that create positive emotional experiences and make students’ academic experience more rewarding and more successful.

Major outcomes & milestones:

• 2018-2019:   Open expanded and redesigned Special Collections and Archives on 4^th floor

Description: Kennedy Library is committed to creating an inclusive culture that embraces differences, encourages diversity, and fosters an environment of respect. We have a shared and mutual responsibility to help each other learn and thrive as colleagues, professionals, and members of our community. We are committed to developing and acknowledging leadership of all kinds that exists throughout our organization, and we cultivate our collective ability and skills in taking action towards achieving an inclusive culture, including empowering others, listening, fostering well-being, and informing ourselves and others in order to more effectively accomplish our shared goals.

Major outcomes & milestones:

• 2017-2018: Establish Library Advisory Committee on Diversity and integrate campus strategic inclusivity goals into every library department.
• 2015-2016: Establish library professional development series.