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Walden Library 2013 Annual Report: Year in Review

Welcome from the Director

Welcome to Walden University Library’s 2013 annual report. In this site, you’ll find the story of our organization through anecdotes and numbers.  Walden University Library had a year of change in 2013. Well, every year is a year of change, at both the Library and Walden.  The trick is to change for the better, and we did that in 2013.

The Library undertook several initiatives last year, including a strategic planning process that led to some changes that are still being realized this year.  Some of this was spurred on by the Library’s co-curricular review, a review process based on Baldridge principles and modeled on Walden’s academic program review process.  The Library was among the first three academic centers at Walden to go through this review process. We learned a lot about the Library during this stringent process, and reaffirmed our library’s values and vision while looking at some issues with scalability and sustainability of practices.

One important change was the promotion of Lisa Raymond to associate director. Lisa has worked at the Walden Library for nearly nine years, becoming the Library’s institutional memory and voice of reason, and Lisa has been a terrific ambassador for the Library. We enhanced Walden’s library and its reputation not just through this well-deserved promotion, but through our staff’s participation in professional conferences and workshops. You’ll read more about that in the Library Staff section of this report.

An important trend in 2013 was the dramatic increase in the use of the Quick Answers FAQ database. Quick Answers started in the fall of 2012 as the library’s modest experiment in maintaining a searchable asynchronous FAQ service, but in 2013 grew to include searchable answers from nearly every student-facing service department at Walden. As of this writing, use of the Quick Answers service is up 138% over last year at this time, meeting students’ needs around the clock. We’re proud of the evolution of our modest experiment and look forward to seeing what it will become in 2014!

This past year was my first full year with Walden and its extraordinary library. I’m proud and very excited to look at all we’ve done, and think of all we will become. Thanks for using Walden’s library and caring about Walden’s mission.  Read on for more detail on how we help the Walden community change the world.

Regards,

Jennie E. Ver Steeg

Library Facebook

 

"All aspects of the library have been useful to me
and have aided in the timeliness of my work;
for that, I am grateful.  Thank you."

-Student survey feedback

2013 Summary

Learn what the library was up to 2013 by exploring the annual report:

A few highlights from 2013: