190 · Representative Documents: Program Evolution
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Organizational Review Team Report |Organizational Recommendations |Research and Learning Division
KU Libraries: Organizational Review Team Report
36
Centers
We recommend a user-based structure for the R&L division comprised of four centers overseeing a number
of cross-functional teams. The centers will provide vision, oversight, and coordination to the teams, with an
emphasis on engagement and support. They will need to allocate, shift, and share resources (including staff
time) among each other, as functional needs will overlap. We recommend director-level leadership of these
centers. The center directors will need to collaboratively ensure that user needs are being met and user
support is provided efficiently and effectively. Centers are listed below, then described in more detail in the
following section:
The Center for Faculty Initiatives and Engagement
Faculty...are the single greatest challenge facing the modern research and academic library. Without faculty
support and understanding and without their regular collaboration with librarians, the research library will not
survive. It may remain as an interesting museum piece or storage facility, but it will no longer be the heart of
the institution.
But the opposite is also true: If we can get faculty and scholars to be willing and eager collaborators with
librarians in their course development, teaching, and research, then we will have guaranteed the active and
irreplaceable role of the library in higher education, no matter how many books are digitized or how much
shelf space is given over to cafés.
Sadly, the exclusion of librarians in both undergraduate course development and advanced scholarship has
created a climate in which librarians find themselves struggling to explain their role in research and teaching
even to university administrators (Rentfrow, 2008).
The Center for Faculty Initiatives and Engagement will focus on supporting KU’s faculty and research
community, including KU’s research centers, through collaboration and engagement in teaching and research
support. Our user-based approach will help KU Libraries develop and articulate its role in supporting the
research and teaching within the university. This center (in close collaboration with other centers) will provide
higher level coordination and resources to support specialized and cross-functional teams in areas such as
Research Data and GIS Services, Digital Research and Publishing, and Scholarly Communications and Copyright.
CENTER FOR
UNDERGRADUATE
INITIATIVES &
ENGAGEMENT
CENTER FOR
GRADUATE
INITIATIVES &
ENGAGEMENT
CENTER FOR
FACULTY
INITIATIVES &
ENGAGEMENT
CENTER FOR
COMMUNITY &
AFFILIATE INITIATIVES
&ENGAGEMENT
ORGANIZATIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS
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