Educational Mission

Sheridan Libraries
Educational Mission and Priorities

Environment

The Sheridan Libraries’ primary mission is to provide information resources and services to support the work of faculty, students, and staff in the three schools based at the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University:  the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Whiting School of Engineering, and the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education.  Students enrolled in the Homewood schools include undergraduates, approximately 90% of whom go on to pursue graduate studies; graduate students enrolled in both full and part-time programs in the arts and sciences and engineering; and students enrolled in large and rapidly developing part-time professional programs (e.g., education, business).  A significant and growing percentage of the student body are distance learners. 

These factors, combined with Hopkins’ highly decentralized academic organizational structure, the emphasis on independent, self-directed study, and a strong research orientation even at the undergraduate level, require that instruction in library and information use be provided through a “just in time” and “just enough” model.  This means that much of our effort is focused on developing, organizing, and disseminating content in the ways that best facilitate our users’ work.  For this reason, there is less emphasis at the Sheridan Libraries on traditional approaches to library instruction that are often found at other universities.  There is also less emphasis on information literacy in the curriculum.  The focus of our educational efforts is on cultivating and maintaining strong relationships with faculty and students in order to understand their needs.  This includes marketing and publicizing our resources and services in order to assist our users in making the best use of the resources available to them.

Elements of the library’s outreach program

The overarching goal of our program is to enable users to find the information they need quickly, to save them time in a complex information environment.  The resources and value-added services we offer should be a preferred alternative to an environment where searching the Internet can seem easier to some and too time-consuming and unproductive to others.  Therefore, an essential component of the Sheridan Libraries’ outreach program is the development of the library’s Web site and various innovative technologies as robust research and instructional tools for our users.  The value that librarians add to the online environment includes not only our expertise in the selection and organization of high-quality scholarly information resources but also the ability to assist users in becoming aware of and proficient users of information resources.  The creation of innovative, robust technologies that will help our students, faculty and staff make the best use of information resources will require:

• Selecting high-quality scholarly content
• Applying professional skills to the organization of online information to make it easily retrievable
• Providing just-in-time, context-sensitive, interactive instructional content
• Providing the opportunity for human interaction and access to our professional expertise via digital, in-person,  and telephone reference service

As the development of a high quality, user-centered, online library presence combined with innovative technology is the foremost component of the program, most staff time and resources are focused on presenting resources and information in the electronic workspaces at the users’ fingertips.

A second element of the outreach program is an emphasis on marketing and publicity.  This includes the continual development of print and electronic user awareness materials, continual interaction with our user groups, and development of mechanisms for obtaining user feedback on library services and resources.

A third element of our program is what may be described as “niche” instructional activities; i.e., opportunities to provide targeted instruction to specific user groups with identified information needs.  Some examples of niche activities include:

• A course on the use of rare books and manuscripts in humanities research
• A workshop for graduate students on searching the chemistry literature
• Instruction in the use of business resources for students participating in the annual undergraduate business plan competition

Librarians need to be prepared to identify and take advantage of these “niche” opportunities.  The impact of our instructional activities must be sufficient to warrant staff time and should be determined by using benchmarks to establish and assess desired outcomes.