We have a New Mission Statement!

Exceptional services, information resources, and a welcoming environment for the Rollins community.

It passes my tests. It is short, it sets a high standard that we must work hard to reach, and I can easily communicate it to people with just the fingers of one hand -- services, resources, environment, and Rollins. I am publishing in in this rather informal place because it still needs to go through a few more trials by fire. I spent some time Friday showing it to various people in the library to gauge their reaction (perhaps the best summary of their reaction would be "cautiously optimistic") and it needs to be presented to the Library Advisory Committee (probably at our April meeting.) We will see how it fairs over the next few weeks.

The staff are now invited to write vision statements based on this mission statement. The idea is that such statements will enable them to fill in some of the gaps in the mission. Because it is short, it doesn't explicitly state whether an environment is physical or online, how the Rollins community is defined, what might constitute exceptional services, what kind of information resources, or whether we own or access them.

In my own opinion our environment is both a physical place and online, the community is the students, faculty, and staff of the College, exceptional services are customer services like circulation and ILL, educational services like group and individualized information literacy teaching and learning, and library services, like collection, description, organization, and preservation, that make a user want to recommend us to their colleagues, and to come back, and we will own some, access others, and provide a portal to still other information resources -- in all formats -- that our users need to fulfil the College's mission to educate responsible leaders and global citizens.