Mission & Priorities

Library Mission

Clatsop Community College’s mission is to build an educational community that provides open access to high quality learning opportunities for the people of our region, and prepares them for full and productive participation in a dynamic world.

The Library’s mission supports the college’s mission by providing the resources, services, and instruction to support the teaching and learning of students, staff, faculty, and to all possible extent, the greater community.

Priorities

1. To extend user services and information resources to foster student opportunity and success, sound research, new knowledge, and critical thinking.
2. To collaboratively develop the Library as a vital intellectual and cultural resource.
3. To advance and improve the Library's ability to implement successfully the Library's goals in support of campus priorities.

Initiatives for the 21st century

1. Maximize student/faculty access to information resources, despite large cuts in acquisitions funding

The library currently does the following things in support of this goal. We are:

• Thinning our physical collection and placing more emphasis on electronic sources that are more accessible and interdisciplinary. Our goal is to have a core collection of seminal works in print and print-non-print and to provide a robust online collection.
• Pursuing grants to develop certain aspects of the collection.
• Participating in ILL through Orbis Cascade Alliance.
• Gathering more feedback through faculty and student surveys which leads to more direct and relevant acquisitions.

The library will:

• Look at new possibilities of ILS, mostly at OCLC’s Web Management system as a way of improving how we can provide access to resources as well as cut costs of hardware and maintenance fees.
• Assess reference (library teaching) moments with a brief survey.

2. Collaborate with faculty to meet Institutional Student Learning Outcome in critical and creative thinking (IL)

The library currently does the following things in support of this goal. We are:

• Teaching and assessing IL in various places throughout the curriculum. This is documented by the Reference & Instruction Librarian.
• Teaching IL in the Writing sequence as mandated by the AAOT. This is accomplished through a collaborative effort by the writing instructors and reference librarian.
• Creating and providing access to online screencasts and tools that address the information literacy process.
• Working with a cross-campus team to develop a FYE which would include IL instruction.

The library will:

• Begin looking at how the library supports this ISLO at the program level

3. Enhance resources, services, and instruction to meet the needs of a diverse campus community, and to the extent possible, the greater community

The library currently does the following things in support of this goal. We are:

• Continuing with a summer reading program that targets lower income areas and large Spanish-speaking populations.
• Pursuing a grant for Building Cultures, a collaboration between the Spanish department, the Adult Literacy program, and the library. This would help to sponsor multicultural events on campus, perhaps some outreach, and also build the library’s collection in appropriate print and print-non-print materials.
• Featuring displays that correspond to multicultural celebrations or important cultural figures. For example, our recent display centered on the Civil Rights movement and corresponded with a visit by Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and civil rights activist.
• Providing databases with resources in multiple languages

The library will:

• Build its summer program. Collaborate with the public library on scheduling, volunteers and resources
• Build its outreach to promote library resources and services to the outer community, particularly the Spanish speaking community. Two outreach visits a year would be a good start.

Library Bill of Rights

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.

1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
2. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
3. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
5. A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
6. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

Adopted June 18, 1948. Amended February 2 1961, June 27 1967, and January 23 1980, inclusion of “age” reaffirmed January 23, 1994 by the ALA Council.