Standard 5.A
Description
The primary purpose for library and information resources is to support teaching, learning, and, if applicable, research in ways consistent with, and supportive of, the institution’s mission and goals. Adequate library and information resources and services, at the appropriate level for degrees offered, are available to support the intellectual, cultural, and technical development of students enrolled in courses and programs wherever located and however delivered.
5.A.1 The institution’s information resources and services include sufficient holdings, equipment, and personnel in all of its libraries, instructional media and production centers, computer centers, networks, telecommunication facilities, and other repositories of information to accomplish the institution’s mission and goals.
5.A.2 The institution’s core collection and related information resources are sufficient to support the curriculum.
5.A.3 Information resources and services are determined by the nature of the institution’s educational programs and the locations where programs are offered.
Summary Overview
[Note: because this narrative is not organized according to the sub-sections of the standard, we will eventually create an index linking the sub-sections to the relevant portions of this chapter.]
Evergreen's information services, including traditional library services, as well as media services and academic computing, serve students, faculty and staff in the context of an ideal expressed in the introduction to Standard II: we expect our students and faculty to engage in "freely chosen inquiry based on broad skills of knowing, reasoning and communicating about issues whose outcomes remain to be discovered." We work to balance dynamic tensions between the open-ended demands of free inquiry in a flexible, responsive curriculum with the need for stability, security and efficiency in systems and services. Thus, our information technology resources and services should be evaluated as they support the aspirations of free inquiry as a fundamental characteristic of the curriculum, balanced with the need for reliable, efficient systems and services.
We believe that the organization, planning, implementation and resources for information services at Evergreen support these aspirations distinctively. While there are many challenges to serving a curriculum and individual students free to pursue any significant question, our information services, whether computing, media or traditional library services, are provided through well-established, intensive, personal, resilient and institutionally thorough-going interconnections to the curriculum, the faculty and the academic administration as well as to the overall mission, culture and focus of the college. These interconnections are exceptionally strong and support high levels of both use and satisfaction in the campus community. This chapter will focus largely on the ways in which these interconnections are facilitated [20%] and then upon evaluating the impact on students through both qualitative and quantitative assessments and identifying the very real challenges to the depth, effectiveness and efficiency of these interconnections as the college grows, the curriculum changes and technological innovations rapidly engender new opportunities [50%+another 30% on our responses to the challenges]. In recognition of our commitment to provide information services cooperatively across the curriculum, the discussion of the library, media services and academic computing is organized below according to broad categories of our shared work: 1) instruction; 2) information collections and services; and 3)information technology tools and spaces. In each case the interdisciplinary, liberal arts and public characteristics of the college, as well the goals of an Evergreen education and the five foci will be invoked as they shape our services and as they encourage "freely chosen inquiry and broad knowing, reasoning and communication about open questions with real world implications."
