1. We must provide research and information support through specialized staff and services, thus helping the University raise its research and scholarship profile.  We must provide especially strong support for those areas the University identifies as providing opportunity for distinction and achievement.  We must also be actively engaged in supporting a heightened international focus, interdisciplinary initiatives, and our professional schools.  Success in these areas will require creative, user-driven methods of communication; commitment to supporting the research process; an excellent information technology infrastructure; and highly-trained staff, each with a strong commitment to continuing education.  We welcome the University’s increased investment in our support services (Vision for the Second Century Elaboration, p. 3).

2. We must bring to the University community access to the resources needed to further its scholarly activity.  We must acquire critical resources and borrow others, building on libraries’ existing networks of national and international cooperation.  Further, we must incorporate into our landscape the important resources even now being made generally available online.  We must make it easy for scholars to find whatever they need, wherever they are, and support tools that will help them use those resources.  A deep commitment to the preservation of resources over time, in particular the intellectual output of the University, must inform all we do.

3. We must actively foster collaborative relationships with other organizations in order to broaden the range of resources we can bring to the University community.  Through consortia, formal institutional agreements, and an active program of informal contacts, we must maximize the resources available to the Rice community.  Particularly in relation to the Medical Center, museums, and other partners the University may identify, we must analyze and actively minimize contractual and practical impediments to a more fully-shared research and information landscape.

4. We must provide leadership for the University in engaging the Houston community.  Continuing our mission of serving the public, as prescribed in Rice’s original charter, we must market and expand activities that bring Houstonians to the library and bring the resources and services of the library to Houston.  Even as we welcome those who visit the library building to use resources and attend public events, we should also create and provide open access to online services of general interest, wherever possible.

5. We must embark on a diligent and sustained research initiative that will identify both needs and possibilities for the library of the future.  Enlisting help from the Rice community and seminal research studies, we must continually question the role of the present library and cultivate a spirit of scientific inquiry and experimentation regarding the changing nature of that library and its resources and services.  While upholding timeless library values such as open access to knowledge and preservation of information, we must use our research findings to shape our practice and strategic directions.

6. We must energetically promote information fluency and participate in the integration of information resources with pedagogy.  We must expand our efforts to teach the use of library resources to meet our users at their various points of need, and we must market our efforts.  We must seek out best practices and delivery mechanisms for delivering library instruction, acknowledging and clearly understanding differences among audiences and disciplines.  We must explore new ways of delivering library resources into the environments in which academic courses are managed and taught.

7. We must create and creatively use inviting community spaces, both physical and virtual, that will represent the library to the University community, to Houston, and to the international community.  Building on our successful building renovation and current planning for the Central Quadrangle, we must stretch our ideas about using library space in support of the life of the community.  We must consider opening spaces in and around the library to new uses.  We must maintain an inviting, usable, content-rich, and current Website, as the virtual representation of the library.

8. We must heighten awareness of and strengthen support for Fondren's special collections in the Woodson Research Center.  One of the hallmarks of a leading research library is a special collections department known for providing access to excellent holdings of rare and unique materials.   The holdings of the Woodson Research Center, although used by local and international researchers alike, remain an underused university asset.  Leveraging this intellectual capital will help the University raise its research and scholarship profile.  A strong digitization program will provide the level of access expected by the Rice community and beyond.  Integration of these resources with pedagogy will round out this effort to serve the research needs of students, faculty, and the greater community.