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Our Mission and Vision

Mission

St. John’s University Libraries advance the teaching, learning, research, and scholarship of the University. We are committed to open, accessible, equitable and inclusive practices in instruction, services, collections and policies.

Vision

St. John’s University Libraries will be recognized as an essential academic partner in the teaching, research, and mission endeavors of the University. We will foster academic success by honoring the diverse voices of scholarship in our communities as a means of empowering our students and faculty to freely discover, create and share new knowledge. 

Collection Development Philosophy

St. John’s University Libraries identifies, acquires, manages and provides access to physical and digital resources to support current curricula needs, to promote scholarly research and inquiry, and to encourage critical practices that allow our community of users to create new knowledge that has the potential to be transformative in nature. The Libraries acknowledges the impact of the evolving information-seeking practices and firmly adheres to an ethos of free and open access to information, freedom of expression, and the need for our collections to reflect diversity and interculturality.

In building our collections, we recognize that libraries are not neutral and as such our traditional collecting practices may have excluded the voices, experiences, and perspectives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and other marginalized groups. With our continued commitment to be an anti-racist and inclusive institution, the Libraries is working toward a more just future for the St. John’s University community of scholars and researchers. To accomplish this, the Libraries will endeavor to:

  • Approach collection development with cultural humility and remain open to what we do not know
  • Critically examine the “authority” of a work through the consideration of author identities, perspectives and historical context in an effort to break down barriers produced by structural oppression and implicit/explicit biases
  • Prioritize collection choices to include intentional consideration of historically marginalized authors and creators
  • Collect materials in a wide range of formats and media in recognition that there are many ways to learn and know
  • Build collections with an ethos of equity and accessibility, and with a commitment to open scholarship that honors scholarly activity
  • Establish healthy, robust, extramural collections through active dialogue with campus partners including faculty and students

We believe that adherence to the University Libraries Collection Development Philosophy will contribute to the intellectual, social, and emotional well-being of our students and other members of our campus community.

 

Image Credit
"Catch a shooting star" by Darwin Bell is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0