Dean’s Note: Looking back and forward
As we enter the mid-point of summer, I find myself both looking back at the previous academic year and forward as we begin planning for fall semester and the new academic year ahead.
During 2025/26 we completed a number of initiatives within our Strategic Plan, including:
- Completed a university-wide assessment of research data needs, leading to recommendations that will expand research data stewardship on campus. The Research & Data Services team administered the survey last fall and shared recommendations this spring.
- Partnered with Impact Accelerator for support in developing grant proposals to increase the ability of UC Libraries faculty and staff to secure external funding. Impact Accelerator is an office that supports research development through training and technical support in developing grant proposals.
- Completed a facilities visioning study in preparation for projected renovations of several library spaces. The visioning study was led by Shepley Bulfinch, an architectural firm with expertise in academic libraries.
- Continued to participate in the university’s AI initiative, which led to a presentation at Cincy AI Week in June.
- Expanded evidence synthesis services through a faculty-developed service model of triage and librarian training. Evidence syntheses include systematic reviews, meta-analyses and scoping reviews, research projects that require extensive literature searching. This expansion creates support for librarians to undertake evidence synthesis across multiple disciplines.
- Launched the Zero Textbook Cost Grant Program, a program to support instructors in adopting open access resources to replace for-cost textbooks. Internal grants were offered to instructors to adopt an existing open access resource or adapt one for use in their course beginning this fall. At a later stage, grants will be offered to instructors interested in authoring their own open access resources.
- Partnered with the UC Foundation to create a case for support document that outlines our fundraising priorities (pictured left).
- And so much more.
In the coming year, we anticipate completing some projects and initiating others. Some of those include:
- The completion of an analysis of our physical collections, which is necessary for addressing our storage issues. We will make decisions on what content is to be stored on- and off-site as our service model at the Fishwick storage location is established.
- Our Collections Development Committee has been working on a collection development policy, which will be released this coming fall.
- This year, we will pilot co-op placements in partnership with the College of Arts & Sciences. In the fall semester, we anticipate hiring student co-ops to work in the Archives & Rare Books Library and on our Communications Team.
- Following the release of our case for support, we will initiate several fundraising activities. The first is a Giving Day campaign centered around soliciting support for our Zero Textbook Cost Program. The second will be an Adopt-a-Book campaign to support special collections, which we anticipate kicking off in February of 2027.
- We have been working to implement Preservica to improve stewardship of digital archives and special collections and expect to go live with this software tool in the coming year.
- Another initiative tied to digital infrastructure is exploration of a software tool, called Leganto, which interfaces with our catalog to support the creation of reading lists for courses. We anticipate a soft rollout of this tool with some early adopters in the spring.
All these initiatives, both those completed and those underway, are in support of our mission to empower discovery, stimulate learning and inspire the creation of knowledge by connecting students, faculty, researchers and scholars to dynamic data, information and resources.
I wish you all an enjoyable rest of summer.
