Our Library, Our Future:  Strategic Priorities for 2025-2028

Preamble

In a world of constant transformation, the Bowdoin College Library is both a sanctuary for reflection and a catalyst for discovery. Grounded in our core values of curiosity, integrity, and stewardship, we embrace our role as a vital hub for the entire Bowdoin community. This document is a product of collaborative reflection and a shared commitment to the future.

This is not a static document, but a living commitment. It is our guide for making intentional choices, for experimenting and innovating, and for ensuring that the Bowdoin Library continues its constant transformation as a place of welcome, care, and endless possibility for all.

Priority 1: To Spark Curiosity within our Community and for Ourselves 

Beyond its role as an information hub on campus, the Bowdoin Library is a catalyst, a domain of never-ending possibility and constant transformation. In partnership with our community, we will generate new pathways for learning, devise effective strategies for connecting people with library resources, and envision thoughtful models for research that integrate deep critical engagement with information, the advantages of newer technologies, and frameworks to support ethical analysis.

• Revitalize our educational programs and services to engage the Bowdoin community and ourselves in learning, mentoring, imagining, and creating.
• Partner with colleagues across campus to understand the practical and ethical implications of using GenAI platforms in specific applications, including in library systems; and, support the Bowdoin community in their efforts to understand the benefits and constraints of this new technology for their work.
• Intrigue and delight the Bowdoin community with snapshots of the Library’s collections, using physical and digital spaces. 
• Create thoughtful opportunities for library staff to share their learning with one another and to contribute to our learning as an organization.

Priority 2: Library Space that Supports People

While our current spaces are severely limited, our imaginations are not. We will find creative ways to adapt our current spaces to best meet the operational needs of staff and to respond to the quickly evolving ways our community engages with collections, teaching, and learning, while also envisioning and actively planning for the next Bowdoin College Library building.

• Invest time and resources implementing strategies and opportunities that allow users to deeply engage with the library spaces, fostering a sense of community and belonging centered around and in the library.
• Maximize the accessibility and usability of current spaces with modest changes such as improving signage to compensate for tricky layouts and space limitations and increasing study space via reenvisioning public spaces.
• Participate actively in the planning of a renovated and greatly expanded library and anticipate and plan for expected changes to space, collections, and services.
• Think expansively about the library by embracing and subverting its definition as a building that contains books and consider how services transcend physical spaces in our digital world.

Priority 3: Assess Collections of the PRESENT to Prepare for the Library of the FUTURE

Developing and maintaining robust and engaging collections is a core mission for all academic libraries. While that work is never completed, the construction and move to the new library building will tightly focus decisions about current and future collections. We will evaluate all aspects of our collections now to enable a more efficient and impactful library of the future.

• Conduct a holistic review of collection development policies and practices, with special consideration to leveraging our scholarly and resources sharing networks and partnerships.
• Implement new policies and workflows to ensure respect for library collections and collections work, including robust description, collection access, maintenance, conservation/preservation, and withdrawal/replacement.
• Evaluate current and future space needs for the collections, including expanding offsite storage and reassessing current offsite collections.
• Reimagine reference collections, including a complete reassessment of public spaces of the first floor of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library.

Priority 4: Advocacy, Communication, and Engagement

To continually evolve and effectively demonstrate the value and impact of the library and staff’s value and impact, it is crucial to employ robust communication, continuous advocacy, and community engagement. 

• Deepen and extend active and engaged partnerships to support the success of the Bowdoin community, including student involvement and participation.
• Promote academic study, reflection, creativity, and social interactions through flexible library spaces, collections, and dynamic services.
• Enhance engagement and advocacy by developing a multi-faceted communication plan to increase public awareness and appreciation of library services, staff, activities, and collections.
• Transform working place practices to encourage staff development, exploration, and experimentation, and effective communication, collaboration, shared values, and participatory decision-making. 
• Tell the story of the Bowdoin Library and invite others to tell theirs.