FOREWORD: A Message from the Dean

When I joined the University of Southern California as dean of the USC Libraries on August 1, 2007, it was clear to me that we had the potential to become an exceptional academic research library. It was just as apparent that some fundamental issues were hindering our ability to actively serve the needs of our users.

With the participation of the libraries' faculty and staff and other members of the USC community, we have developed this plan to identify and address those obstacles and to begin to integrate the libraries more effectively as an essential partner in research and scholarship at USC.

The USC Libraries' plan of action for the next 12 to 18 months embodies the university's core strategies, including the drive to meet societal needs, the push for a greater global presence, and the promotion of interdisciplinary, learner-centered education. Of course, our plan also looks out and into the world to consider the external forces shaping the needs of our faculty, students, and staff.

The advances that enable innovative research and a culture of persistent connectivity among faculty, students, and staff are changing the physical, social, and technological character of libraries. However, to be successful, we must overcome commonplace prognostications about a digital-only future, and we must not pursue one medium at the expense of another.

Rather, we must determine what most effectively contributes to the academic achievements of our users. USC's lively research and teaching environment demands the best information at the best time, limited by neither disciplinary boundaries nor a doctrinaire approach to media. It also demands innovative thinking about how physical collections and new media should be preserved, retrieved, evaluated, and incorporated into teaching, learning, and research.

If we take a format-agnostic, content-focused path, the library will become a manifestation of discovery itself. It will become a place where knowledge exists in its most accessible forms, where learners and researchers find information, certainly, but also the people and tools with which to combine and recombine their discoveries and integrate them into new ways of understanding.

To that end, this document describes our vision for the essential library at USC. It addresses the practical issues that are fundamental to the success of our users, as well as the innovations that speak to our responsibility as an indispensable source of information on campus and beyond. It is a concrete expression of the imperatives that—over the next year and a half—will reinforce our foundations and begin to forge our future.


Catherine Quinlan
Dean of the USC Libraries