The AUP Library is an encyclopedic Anglophone collection of scholarly materials located in central Paris and serving the needs of the University community, from undergraduates and graduate students to staff members, active teacher/scholars, and visiting researchers. The library is proud of its professional librarians and skilled staff, depth of coverage in specialized electronic databases, and innovative, curriculum-embedded, information literacy program. The Library, with ARC and ITS, aims to become the intellectual commons of the university.
The three main challenges facing the library over the next five years are the rapid expansion of MA programs at AUP, the planned move to a new campus, and the revolutions in information technology and scholarly communications that are transforming library services worldwide. These changes will necessitate evolution of our mission statement.
The Library's mission includes helping the AUP community achieve its learning, teaching, and research goals by:
1. Identifying, selecting and collecting information resources - Assembling information resources
2. Organizing, delivering and providing access to information resources - Connecting users and information resources
The Library creates opportunities for learning and research to occur in a variety of environments adapted to the learning and working styles of individual users. Within the limits of its physical and technological infrastructure, the Library provides physical spaces and helps create online environments that are conducive to individual study, collaborative group work, and successful interaction with information resources of all types. In addition, the Library helps connect its users with the wealth of information resources available in the Paris area and worldwide.
Goals areas:
Organizing information and making it accessible
Apply appropriate and current techniques to organize resources in a way that allows users to easily find the best tools and sources for their research:
Facilitate users' access to materials and information once identified:
Physical space and IT infrastructure for learning and research
Provide physical space, equipped with adequate information technology, that enables users to effectively find, use, share and create information:
Online environments for learning and research
Expand the Library's creation of online environments that help connect users with the information they need for their research, including:
Extend the point-of-need integration of library and other relevant information resources and services into the learning and research environments inhabited by our users, including:
Through collaboration with ITS, explore the application of technologies for automated bridging of information resources, including: link resolvers, federated search platforms, and other technologies for automated integration and interoperability.
3. Assisting all its users in becoming self-sufficient, information-literate researchers - Enabling self-sufficiency and information literacy
The Library provides assistance to its users in research and in the use of Library services, using the forms of communication most convenient and best adapted to our users' learning styles, educational level, and technology skills. The Library collaborates with faculty to provide course-integrated information literacy instruction, across the curriculum but with a particular focus on incoming students.
Goals:
Provide a user friendly environment with competent and prompt assistance.
Provide assistance at times when the users most need them.
Offer a variety of modes of interaction such as:
Encourage users' feedback on research assistance services
The Library collaborates with faculty to provide course-integrated information literacy instruction, across the curriculum but with a particular focus on incoming students.
Goals:
Communicate clearly to the community the characteristics, the "beyond the curriculum" nature, and the importance of information literacy in today's world of proliferating resources
Work in close collaboration with faculty members and academic administrators when it comes to plan, design, deliver, evaluate, and improve information literacy instruction; this under the leadership and coordination of a designated person.
Have adequately equipped instructional facilities sufficient in number and size
Teach - with the faculty involved - core information literacy competencies as identified by relevant professional associations and accrediting bodies:
Support as much as possible diverse teaching approaches as well as learning styles
Design and deliver upper level instruction sessions to students other than first-year students. In particular, address the needs of graduate students, pursue efforts with capstone courses and possibly start engaging in new research methods courses in disciplinary majors.
Gather data regarding the existing instruction program to allow evaluation and assessment
4. Facilitating preservation, organization, and access to the intellectual capital of the University - Facilitating stewardship of local scholarly production
The Library collects, archives, and makes available publications produced by faculty, students, and the University.
Goal areas:
Identify key scholarly works in selected formats, produced by the University community, for collecting and archiving
Create policies and standards for submission of such works so that they can be made as accessible as possible for the AUP community
Explore, in collaboration with other campus stakeholders, systems for managing the submission, storage and accessibility of such works
Organizational Values
The Library is committed to:
Communication. The Library values regular and open communication among Library staff members as well as between the Library and the University administration.
Collaboration and cooperation, both within the University and with external partners by
Service. The Library strives to provide the highest quality of service possible
Investing in human resources. The Library recognizes the importance of a staff sufficient in size and quality to meet the needs of all users. In particular, the Library encourages staff to capitalize on new developments in librarianship and information technology through
Ethical use of information. The Library is committed to respecting, and increasing our users' awareness of, national and international intellectual property laws.