Mission & Strategic Plan
Our Mission
The Caltech Library partners with faculty, students, and staff across the Institute in the creation, dissemination, and discovery of knowledge. To advance the Institute’s mission to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education, the Library catalyzes information discovery and sharing while functioning as a center for scholarship and innovation. The Caltech Library provides students, faculty, and staff with access to collections and repositories, research and instruction support, publication services, and preservation of data and archival materials.
Strategic Plan
The Caltech Library has devised its Strategic Plan for Annual Years 2024 through 2027. Download the Strategic Plan as a PDF.
This plan serves as the foundation for progress at the Caltech Library and establishes future directions to ensure its growth as a premier research library befitting the world-class research institution it serves. Each strategic priority has one or two central goals. Each goal has a set of outcomes that, if realized, would indicate that goal has been achieved.
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility
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Goal 1: Build and support spaces, services, and access to resources that accommodate the needs and abilities of all in our community and eliminate unnecessary hurdles.
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Goal 2: Provide our staff with opportunities for leadership, professional development, and growth.
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Goal 3: Create a work culture that strives for inclusion and belonging for our staff.
Discovery, Access, and Dissemination
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Goal 1: Discovery. Build collections, systems, and relationships that allow the communities we serve to meet their information needs for research, teaching, and learning.
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Goal 2: Access. Provide and promote library resources and services in a manner that is user-focused, efficient, and friendly
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Goal 3: Dissemination. Proactively develop and deploy tools, repositories, and services that promote the use and dissemination of Caltech research and archival collections around the globe.
Responsible Stewardship
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Goal 1: Facilities. Maintain current Library facilities to ensure the proper care of our collections and spaces for our community and improve facilities as needed.
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Goal 2: Collections. Maximize our collections budget for the strategic acquisition, processing, and preservation of resources.
Learning and Leadership
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Goal 1: Innovate to support the communities that we serve, learn from innovations outside of Caltech, and share what we learn with our colleagues as well as the broader library community.
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Goal 2: Serve as leaders on campus and in the larger library community through the unique skill sets and contributions of our colleagues.
EDBI Value Statement
We recognize that equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging are core to the mission of the Caltech Library. Equity goes beyond equality and means fair and impartial access to our collections and services for the entire Caltech community. Diversity means all of the various ways the members of our community are unique; it includes but is not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, and national origin. Inclusion means embracing all members of our community as part of a greater whole. Belonging means full acceptance of the members of our community and celebrating them for the richness their experiences bring to our collective work. These values are the primary guiding principle in our work, and they are both individual responsibilities and institutional imperatives.