HKUST Library Mission Statement

HKUST Library Mission and Goals

Mission

To support the University's
teaching and research programs.

To provide for and to promote the
general education of HKUST Students.

To contribute to Hong Kong
and its regional development in
information sharing and exchange.

Over the years, the HKUST Library has accomplished a great deal in support of learning, teaching, and research at the University. As the Library mission statement implies, the goals of the HKUST Library include providing access to and delivery of information resources to faculty and students in support of their learning, teaching, and research activities. As part of its reference and information services, the Library also seeks to prepare HKUST students for their professions, for citizenship, and for a lifetime of continual learning.

To that end, the Library will continue to develop, organize, and maintain collections that will support and enhance the curriculum and the research programs at HKUST, facilitate access to quality information worldwide (including selection and cataloging of open access online resources relevant to our academic programs), and assist users to develop skills necessary to identify, locate, evaluate, and use information resources.

Strategic Goals

In 2005, based on the Library mission and a SWOT analysis of the current context in which the HKUST Library operates, the following strategic directions were identified to guide our activities in the coming years. While these goals are scoped to five years into the future, we will review and modify them when it becomes necessary.

Strategic Goal 1:

Expand aggressively the scope and extent of our electronic resources, especially e-journals and web-based reference tools, to better meet the teaching and research needs of the university community and to assist faculty in integrating these resources into their curricula.

Strategic Goal 2:

Establish and build up an endowment for collections, in addition to obtaining additional financial support from all other sources and means, to help support and sustain the critical development of information resources needed by library users.

Strategic Goal 3:

Enhance our document delivery and interlibrary lending and borrowing capacities, including refining procedures related to the ILLiad system and the HKALL implementation at HKUST.

Strategic Goal 4:

Complement credit-based information literacy instruction with additional library classes to further enhance our students' information seeking skills and advance their lifelong learning.

Strategic Goal 5:

Apply latest information technologies and upgrade our service infrastructure, including our web presence, servers, computer workstations, equipment (microform scanners, digital copiers, etc.) and tools (e.g., WebBridge, ERM, millennium modules, etc.), to better support user networked information access and library acquisitions, cataloging and other tasks that are central to our service provision, including Reference, Access Services, Media Services, University Archives.

Strategic Goal 6:

Seek and create additional spaces for collaborative learning and independent study and improve our instructional facilities to allow for more effective library instruction, in addition to maintaining a safe and attractive library environment.

Strategic Goal 7:

Work collaboratively and more closely with other JULAC libraries to improve library services and to address common library issues, e.g., consortial acquisitions, shared resources, collaborative cataloging, shared storage facility, etc., and explore collaborative and exchange programs with libraries at world-class universities, either in the Mainland or overseas.

Strategic Goal 8:

Provide access to selected electronic resources, and other services when and if operationally and fiscally feasible, to HKUST alumni.

Strategic Goal 9:

Nurture a culture of assessment in the Library and develop greater capability for outcome-based and other types of assessment to improve recurrent operations.

Strategic Goal 10:

Support staff and professional development by providing more training and working opportunities for all levels of library staff; sponsor conferences and seminars which help demonstrate the Library's leadership role in areas of importance to the library profession; sustain activities that help promote the use of our library collections or support the University goal on the "whole-person" development, e.g., Collection Highlights, SciTech Alerts, culture-focused exhibits.