The Information Infrastructure: An Excerpt from the Plan for the Year 2000, University of Virginia | |
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Objectives
When Thomas Jefferson created the University of Virginia, he placed the library in the Rotunda and personally selected the 7,000 books around which learning would occur. Today, the University s facilities include the University Library and its twelve branches; three independent professional school libraries for health sciences, law, and business; and twenty-seven auxiliary departmental libraries. The combined holdings of the libraries include more than 25,000 journals, three million books, one million government documents, two million pieces in the University archives, and ten million manuscripts.
The ways in which we acquire, store, and disseminate information will multiply in the future; in addition to the traditional hard copy" method of storing information, we will rely increasingly on computerized storage and retrieval. This almost certainly means that we will spend comparatively greater sums acquiring access to databases held elsewhere while, at the same time, ensuring that we acquire the kinds of materials that the University needs to own. The 1989 Report of the Commission on the University of the 21st Century envisions an integrated network of resources that supports academic excellence. Libraries are the heart of that network -- a critical link in the generation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge, the fostering of global perspectives, and the development of scientific and technical literacy.
Strategies
1. Provide Access to Knowledge. The University needs to provide and maintain sufficient space, top-quality facilities, and the requisite resources, technology, and services to build and sustain nationally competitive programs of scholarship, particularly in those disciplines that reflect the University's academic priorities. A significant institutional commitment to the research and instructional infrastructures is essential if the University is to become a model research institution, attract superb scholars to its faculty, and generate excitement in its learners.
2. Provide Access When and Where Needed. For our internal communities, the University plans to be able to deliver requested information directly to the user when and where needed in the most readily accessible format. To this end, the library hopes to expand text retrieval services and to establish electronic information access centers in residential colleges.
3. Create an Effective Mix of Information Access. The University intends to provide cost-effective access to information by achieving a balance among the development of on-site collections and computer facilities, the purchase or creation of specialized databases, and the provision of remote access on an as-needed basis to resources available around the world.
4. Provide Training in Information Resources and Management. The University must ensure that faculty, students, and staff have the skills and knowledge necessary to make effective use of the institution s information resources. To this end, we will increase the education role of librarians and integrate the management of information, especially by computer, into the curricula.
5. Adapt the Library s Infrastructure. The University seeks to ensure that the libraries physical space including the technological infrastructure, properly controlled storage and stack areas, study areas, and electronic classrooms and information centers supports academic excellence.
6. Implement Library Evaluation Standards. The University plans to evaluate library services and collections in terms of the difference they make to its community of learners. To do so, the University must implement library evaluation strategies that focus on outcomes, developing a system to track the materials needed and used, and integrating the data into planning, budget development, and other decision making opportunities.
7. Develop Networks and Other Cooperative Arrangements. The University seeks resources to play a leadership role in developing and strengthening the local, state, and national networks and other cooperative arrangements needed to manage information most effectively, with attention to the technology as well as to information-access policies, standards, guidelines, and costs.
8. Strategically Develop Special Collections. The University endeavors to construct a special collections library that will enhance the institution s role as a preeminent national center for the study of history and literature. We must be prepared to welcome scholars from around the world who will come to our special collections, including the Barrett Collection of American Literature.
9. Preserve Existing Material. To assist in national efforts to preserve the records of our society s intellectual heritage, the University hopes to expand its efforts to preserve deteriorating library materials.
Objectives
Scholarship is based on the ability to understand, critically evaluate, and communicate information. In educating students, we must equip them with these abilities. The creation of new knowledge includes reasoning about current wisdom. The ability to accomplish these important tasks, basic to the mission of the University, is becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Information sources are growing in number and in richness of content. Text, data, images, and voice are all important for scholarship. Entire fields of study have emerged that depend on computing and communication technologies. The understanding of the human genetic code, the creation of large-scale integrated circuits, many areas of medical advancement, computer- assisted design, and the study of astronomical phenomena are but a few of the fields that would not be possible without this technology. Too, our ability to communicate with the external world is being transformed by technological advances in communication.
The computerized, electronic library is becoming a central resource for the University. Electronic media, electronic searching, and electronic navigation through local, national, and worldwide libraries are adding a new dimension to the sources available to scholars. Learners can now gain access to collections of information from their homes, offices, clinics, and any other location in which there is a computer connection to a network.
Technology also affects the organization and outfitting of classrooms, laboratories, and studios, reconfigures the patterns of student work, and has the potential to transform the learning process. The availability of new technology to merge modes of learning, to extend the walls of the University, and to provide unparalleled interaction among the worldwide community, opens immense possibilities for greater understanding and sharing of knowledge. A strong infrastructure must exist for the University to operate efficiently and to be able to provide proper service to students, an adequate working environment for its faculty and staff, health care to patients, a resource for the community, and a world-class academic environment for the pursuit of scholarship. As we move toward the year 2000, we must define this infrastructure to allow us to move with agility through what is one of the fastest changing revolutions that society has experienced. We hope to be able to fully support the academic enterprise by applying computing and communication technologies to the educational, research, and service activities of the University.
Strategies
1. Create an Appropriate Informational Infrastructure. The University intends to build an infrastructure to support the highest quality of scholarship and teaching. It must include the ability to communicate text, data, voice, and video. A wide range of computing platforms from the largest, fastest, high-speed computers so essential in areas such as physics, engineering, textual analy sis of literary works, and computer-aided architectural design to individualized workstations, available to the learners in all areas of the University, should be readily available. The University aspires to integrate the newest technologies into the environment not because it is an end in itself, but because it is a crucial means by which the University seeks to solidify its position as a preeminent center for the creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge.
2. Equip Classrooms, Laboratories, and Offices. The University plans to adapt its classrooms and laboratories to accommodate new computing and communications technology for teaching, research, and service. In addition, the University seeks to provide faculty and students with electronic access to scholarly material in their classrooms, laboratories, homes, and residence halls.
3. Apply Information Technology to Health Care. The connection between technology and modern-day health care is critical. The University must sustain its position of national leadership in applying information technology to health care. It will also complete the integrated academic information management system in the health sciences center, as well as implement new technologies in the organization, management, and assessment of health care and health-care systems.
4. Creatively Use Technologies to Streamline the University. To improve the University s efficiency, the University plans to continue to computerize our business and administrative activities. Taking advantage of interactive computing technologies, the University also hopes to find ways of reducing the administrative workload of its faculty, provide better decision-making tools to faculty and administrators alike, and allow efficient use of resources by all members of the academic community.
5. Use Technology to Facilitate Student Access to Services. The University will initiate on-line computer applications to enhance services to students. Using modern communications technologies, the University plans to improve student registration, access to grades, billing, and similar services.
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