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Foundations and Organization


Vision/ Mission/ Principles     Goals/Objectives     Organization     Executive Group    Advisory Group     Working Groups

Goals & Objectives

While the Principles set the underlying values for the KU Digital Library Initiatives, it is necessary to realize these Principles through more concrete action plans. These action plans are expressed through the current KU-DLI Goals and Objectives.

Goal 1: Establish and develop a significant corpus of digital collections that are relevant to the teaching and research interests of the KU community. These collections may be created from the conversion to digital form of documents, photographs, artifacts and other knowledge objects in analog formats contained in KU libraries and archives as well as those of other organizations, or from the incorporation of KU holdings already in electronic form.

Objectives:
  1. Develop guidelines for the selection of analog collections to be converted and existing digital resources for representation in the KU-DL.
  2. Educate the KU community on DLI standards and best practices.
  3. Create a visible network of resources to provide assistance for faculty and others in the translation of ideas into potential projects.
  4. Identify projects that demonstrate the value and use of digital collections and that match KU faculty expertise and/or collection strengths.
  5. Support the development of these digital collections through grant development or other means (see Goal 3).

Goal 2: Establish a management structure based on broad community participation with active links to state and national efforts, to coordinate and guide the funding, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of the KU Digital Library to:

  • set policy regarding participation, funding, development, access, intellectual property, and privacy;
  • to promote accomplishments and facilitate and reward broad involvement across disciplines; and
  • to remove barriers of policy and practice that may inhibit full citizen access to and use of the digital library.

A collaborative management approach that encourages broad contribution to and use of the KU-DL will be key to the success of the enterprise.

Objectives:
  1. Seek advice and counsel from other KU faculty, administrators, and student groups regarding the appropriate mechanism for the management structure.
  2. Schedule and conduct regular meetings of the KU-DLI Advisory Group.
  3. Review structures from other universities.
  4. Establish liaison relationships between the KU-DLI and the Kansas Digital Library, the Great Plains Network, and the Digital Library Federation.
  5. Identify and create incentives for contribution to and use of the KU-DL for faculty and students.

Goal 3: Develop a resource strategy that addresses the need for support from both public and private sources to provide the means to build and maintain an infrastructure and to launch new initiatives. Long term planning, collaboration and ongoing assessment will be key principles for ensuring success.

Objectives:
    Start a funding stream for building the infrastructure and for starting selected digitizing projects for the KU-DLI. Possible funding sources include but are not limited to:
    • Research overhead seed money
    • Grants from federal agencies, such as National Science Foundation (NSF), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
    • Fundraising/capital campaign.
    • Reallocation of existing "information funds".

    Plan for overall leadership for the program and staffing. Efforts will be made to:
    • Identify and assemble talent needed to move projects forward.
    • Ensure that resources are efficiently and effectively allocated and deployed.
    • Build credibility with decision-makers to invest and credibility with community in general.

    Seek funding opportunities through collaboration and cooperation with existing programs / projects. This draws in more stakeholders and leverages economic resources. It also often increases the attractiveness of projects to potential funding agencies. Possible opportunities include, but are not limited to:
    • Cooperation with the Kansas Digital Library.
    • Cooperation with the Great Plains Network (GPN) to use Internet2 for the KU-DLI.
    • Promotion of the KU-DLI as an integral dissemination piece for all university grants.
Goal 4: Adopt and promote common standards and best practices to create interoperability within the KU-DL and between the KU-DL and other digital libraries to:
  • assure universal accessibility and protection of user rights
  • optimize retrieval and navigation for a diverse spectrum of users
  • maximize the amount and quality of the information that is captured in the system; and
  • assure archiving and enduring access.

Attention to both current functionality and long-term sustainability in the selection of standards and practices will be critical to the success of the library.

Objectives:
  1. Review and implement the recommendations proposed by the Digital Library Initiatives Technical Infrastructure Task Force.
  2. Monitor the digital library community for emerging and stabilizing standards and practices, and introduce new standards as appropriate.

Goal 5: Establish a comprehensive assessment program that involves ongoing feedback and wide dissemination of key findings. Flexibility will be key in this area because of the need to respond to rapidly changing technologies, content and the needs of the users. Thus, assessment methodologies will need to be reviewed periodically for appropriateness.

Objectives:
  1. Run pilot studies early in the process to identify key success factors.
  2. Identify how users at all levels make use of digital library collections for research, learning, discovery and collaboration.
  3. Compare user satisfaction levels with KU-DL initiatives with those of traditional and other digital libraries.
  4. Determine how the benefits of the KU-DLI will affect the mission, economics, staffing, and organization of the KU Libraries and Information Services.
  5. Evaluate the usability of the KU-DL and identify barriers to effective use. Individuals representing a diverse spectrum of interests should be involved in this assessment.