Rationale

OLS strives to strategically centralize services and content to create efficiency, reduce costs, improve accessibility and leverage buying power across the University. At the same time, centralization, and a commitment to viewing our libraries through the lens of a shared CUNY collection, frees libraries of the burden of administrative functions and creates opportunities to reimagine physical spaces, allowing the individual libraries to focus on serving their unique communities and meet their specific needs.

Five-Year Actions by Goal

Goal 1 (Integration):

• Develop and support a critical digital infrastructure that emboldens CUNY Libraries to describe, exhibit, and preserve the archival record of their communities in centrally procured and managed digital library systems that maximize the impact of these important collections.
• Manage library systems that facilitate access to course content at students’ point of need, embedding the libraries in local teaching and learning efforts

Goal 2 (Innovation):

• Engage the campus libraries in an evidence-based coordinated collection development (CCD) effort that supports print and electronic acquisition decisions in service to curriculum and research needs on a local and University-wide level, and frees up library spaces to be used for campus-specific needs.
• Create discipline-based, cross campus affinity groups to improve library collections and services in key areas that actively support workforce development, for example: health and human services, teacher education, and business.
• Create and support dashboards with centrally-managed usage data to facilitate decisions around collections and spaces.

Goal 3 (Centralization):

• Strengthen centralized OLS technical services and systems units to remove redundancy across CUNY Libraries and allow libraries to hire or reassign staff and faculty to address local needs.
• Increase access to licensed electronic resources through expanded centralized licensing, moving toward universal access to CUNY’s electronic collections, encouraging integrated programs, cross-campus collaboration, and seamless support for CUNY researchers.
• Retool and refine Alma access and workflows, including institution zone (IZ) management and network zone (NZ) management

End States

We will know we are successful when:

• CUNY shared collections have added richness and diversity with a smaller physical footprint as a result of targeted deduplication and coordinated collection development.
• Campus libraries can rely on OLS for increased centralized services, including procurement and licensing services and maintaining centralized platforms, freeing up resources to address their local needs.
• Significant cost savings are achieved as a result of centralized procurements and platforms.