Transcending Borders: The SDSU Library Strategic Plan, 2022–2025

Introduction

San Diego State University (SDSU) is committed to a mission that includes providing transformative educational experiences to students across the greater San Diego and U.S. – Mexico border regions, supporting ground-breaking research addressing complex problems facing our local, state, national, and global communities, and promoting engagement with the diverse community of San Diego and Imperial counties to ensure the broadest access to higher education and opportunities for lifelong learning. The University Library is an essential feature of the educational landscape at SDSU and across the region, whether that education is being pursued in the classroom, across the campus, in the community, or through an increasing array of digital means.

The University Library’s strategic plan complements and extends the impact of the university’s strategic plan, “We Rise, We Defy: Transcending Borders, Transforming Lives,” and reflects the university’s established “Principles of Community,” which include commitments also shared across all libraries to diversity, intellectual freedom, and social responsibility. Our plan also complements the commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice found in the Library Diversity Plan.

We have chosen to echo the university’s goal of “transcending borders” in the title of this plan owing to our core commitment to understanding the work of a library as one that transcends intellectual borders, fosters communication and collaboration across organizational and disciplinary borders, and embraces an unbounded vision for collections and services reflecting the university’s ambition to establish its place as a global institution of higher education resident on the borderlands.

The University Library strategic plan was developed with input from library faculty, staff, and stakeholder communities by its Strategic Planning Steering Committee: Adam Burkhart (2020-22), Amaya Childess (2020-21), Erika Esquivel (2020-22), Margaret Henderson (2020-22), Kate Holvoet (2020-22), Lisa Lamont (2020-22), Amanda Lanthorne (2020-21), Patrick McCarthy (2020-22), Devan McGirr (2022), Brian Moore (2020-22), and Scott Walter (Chair) (2020-22).

Land Acknowledgement

For millennia, the Kumeyaay people have been a part of this land. This land has nourished, healed, protected and embraced them for many generations in a relationship of balance and harmony. As members of the San Diego State community we acknowledge this legacy. We promote this balance and harmony. We find inspiration from this land; the land of the Kumeyaay.

For more information on the San Diego State University Land Acknowledgement, please visit: https://sacd.sdsu.edu/diversity-resources/land-acknowledgment