Week 26: Supporting Teaching, Learning, Research and Community Engagement

Week 26 marks 6 full months of primarily remote work as a result of the HMS campus COVID-19 pandemic shut-down. This week also marks the beginning of Countway Library’s Phase 2 smart restart ramp up. By all accounts, our Phase 2 restart has gone smoothly. While Library managers have focused on shutting down and restarting library onsite services these last 6 months, I have also been struck by how much we have accomplished in aligning our library’s goals to Dean Daley’s goals for HMS despite the challenging circumstances. I want to take this opportunity to review Dean Daley’s goals, describe the Countway alignment efforts broadly, and outline the path for moving forward this semester.

Harvard Medical School Strategic Goals Chart. Please open the HMS Strategic Plan document hyperlinked to the text Figure 1 and Figure 2 for the full text.

Figure 1 (above) highlights the major elements in the HMS Strategic Plan. This plan was developed in conjunction with the medical school’s preparations for the accreditation site visit. The HMS mission statement was rewritten to include a more inclusive statement of diversity and inclusion. There are 5 cross-cutting goals, all of which correspond to 3 mission-level priorities. The foundational elements of the plan include collaboration, data-driven discovery, quality improvement, quality space, diversity, inclusion, community engagement, and sound financial and business practices.

Figure 2 (below) illustrates the Countway Library strategic planning efforts and how it aligns with the HMS strategic plan. At the same time, HMS was working on its plan, we had begun working on ours. We also began to think about Countway as a brand and designing a communications strategy focused on our pillars of strength. These 5 pillars are: research and education; classes and events; community and space; resources and access and information and resources specialists. These all align well with the Dean’s Mission-level Priorities.

Countway Library Strategic Goals Chart. Please open the Countway Library Strategic Plan document hyperlinked to the text Figure 1 and Figure 2 for the full text.

Countway Library’s management team (CAT) has been working on identifying the specific activities each library unit has been working on this past year and matching them to the Dean’s Mission-level Priorities. There are too many to list in this week’s message. However, some examples within Teaching and Learning include: embedding instruction into the curriculum and renovating the library space for more community engagement. We have accomplishments in every priority level.

During the upcoming semester, we will resume tracking our activities to the various school-wide planning efforts. We will also resume Countway All Staff meetings, our next being on September 22nd. During the next staff meeting, we will update you on two library-wide initiatives –the BML inventory and construction. In future staff meetings, I will be asking departments to report out their activities and alignment to the HMS and Countway Library plans. While the library smart restart took center stage these past few months, it is important to note that the library’s services and resources benefiting teaching, learning, research, scholarship, and service to the community did not stop. I am looking forward to bringing us back together as a staff to celebrate our accomplishments.

Elaine