Establishing Organizational Identity: Collaboratively Creating a Library Mission and Values Statement

Background: In a year-long participatory process that involved all library employees, an academic health sciences library developed a Mission and Values Statement to formally express the library’s guiding principles. Leadership of the university libraries had asked each departmental unit to identify shared values in order to inform the creation of a broader values statement for the university library system. With this prompting, the [library name’s] statement was developed in collaboration with the library’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team.

Description: In late 2020, the library director constructed and disseminated a survey to all health sciences library employees, asking for the top three values they thought represented the library. This was followed by an all-staff virtual meeting where employees participated in breakout rooms to organize the suggested values from the survey into larger themes. In a second meeting, the agreed-upon themes were then discussed and further refined in different breakout groups, and draft descriptions were written for each theme. Working from these, members of the DEI team drafted a mission statement to articulate the overall purpose of the library, as well as the individual values that guide library employees in pursuing that mission. The draft statement was shared at an all-staff meeting and all employees were invited to provide written or verbal follow-up feedback.

Conclusion: The finalized statement was added to the library’s website. The five values identified were: Accuracy and Integrity, Community and Collaborations, Inclusion and Accessibility, Equity and Justice, and Lifelong Learning and Innovation. The overarching mission touched on each of these values, stating that “our mission is to improve health education and research by facilitating access to information and empowering individuals to critically assess evidence. As active partners in the education, research, training and clinical needs of our communities, we are committed to promoting equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice in healthcare.”