Last year, following a wide-ranging consultation process, the University formally adopted Melbourne’s Scholarly Information Future: a 10-year strategy.
The aspirations and principles in the Scholarly Information Future strategy have now been incorporated with the University’s long-term vision, known as Growing Esteem.
Some funding was allocated for 2009, to enable us to start implementing the Scholarly Information Future strategy. The new funding will support five high-priority activities:
- Embed information/scholarly literacy training into undergraduate and postgraduate curricula: pilot projects in 2009, with full rollout over 5 years
- Innovation Grants scheme: internal competitive grants to support projects that explore or change scholarly communication
- Plan and implement a fundraising strategy to support renovation of the main Library building (Baillieu), maintenance of Cultural Collections, development of other collections and development of a new Research and Cultural Library building
- Develop long-term plan for collection management and development. Includes principles, criteria and quality measures to ensure best possible use of available storage and floor spaces, both on and off campus. Must take into account temporary or permanent relocation of selected collections to allow for building renovations and campus developments
- Detailed planning for further implementation of the 10-year Scholarly Information Future strategy: investigation, costing and documentation of 2010-2012 initiatives; initial discussions about the Research and Cultural Library building and for the development of a centre of excellence in the study of library/information sciences
A sixth project, to upgrade our Identity and Access Management System, had been planned and funded to commence in 2010. This IT project has been brought forward to 2009 because it is a pre-requisite for achieving other medium-term goals in the Scholarly Information Future strategy.
As well as the six funded priorities, the University Library and the IT Services division have incorporated other Information Futures goals and principles into their day-to-day operations. (Last week I posted some examples from the Library’s 2009 operational plan.)
The University Librarian, Philip Kent, and Director IT Services, Sendur Kathir, are overseeing the implementation of the Scholarly Information Future strategy. The Enterprise Information Architecture and Strategy group (which I manage) is responsible for day-to-day coordination and reporting on progress.
I will post regular progress reports on this blog during 2009. These will be informal updates based on conversations and meetings I’ve attended. The posts will be tagged “implementation 2009” – click that tag to see a list of all updates posted so far.
Formal progress reports will be submitted to relevant University managers and committees throughout the year.