The Harvard Library will meet the rising expectations of the Harvard community by providing unparalleled services that advance the University’s mission to create new knowledge.
The Future of the Harvard Library
Watch an animated story about the future of the Harvard Library, as seen through the eyes of students and scholars. The story conveys how the Library connects people and ideas across time, and across the digital and physical worlds.
Our Objective
The Library’s objective is to ensure that the Library provides access to a remarkable and growing collection at Harvard and from around the world, that the community can count on librarians as essential partners in research and learning and that we collaborate with others to transform the process by which ideas are developed and communicated.
The new Harvard Library participates in the intellectual heart of research and teaching by being even more focused on
- Understanding the needs of users so that the Harvard community benefits from library services and the ability to access information however and wherever they need, now and in the future.
- Partnerships in scholarship so that scholars and students count on librarians’ deep knowledge of information behavior, subject knowledge expertise and our partnerships with others within and outside of Harvard in the creation, management, dissemination and preservation of scholarly information.
- Leadership, innovation and collaboration so that the Harvard community can take full advantage of the global knowledge network now and in the future.
- Access for all so that the entire community benefits from the breadth of the Harvard Library.
How We Get There
The Library will achieve the vision by focusing on transformational strategic steps regarding:
- Open access and scholarly publishing
- Organizing knowledge
- Providing access to information through coalition-building
- Designing physical and virtual library space
- Partnering in digital scholarship
The Library's focus will include developing and continually improving the essential strategies for creating an innovative, effective and efficient organization.
Benefits
The initial benefits to the Harvard community include:
- Development of collections across and outside Harvard.
- Faster delivery of information.
- All Harvard users can borrow materials from anywhere in the University.
- More access to unique materials, physically and digitally.
- Delivery of high and consistent standards of service University-wide.
- Better understanding of and adaptation to user needs.
- Ability to create, curate, share personal digital collections for research and teaching.
- Access to expertise and a technical infrastructure to archive digital materials.
- Development of innovative library practices, services and products.
- A global network of relationships that ensures best practices.
