Strategic plan: UB 2025. The future is open

As a centre of academic knowledge for students and academic staff, the UB has a crucial role in realizing the University's strategy. The UB offers researchers, lecturers and students expertise, advice and support in a continuously changing academic landscape.

The transition to open science, open education and an open society, changing teaching and learning methods, ongoing digitalization and new requirements for study environments demand flexible and state-of-the-art services and working methods at the UB.

How can the UB best advise and support researchers in the area of open science? How does the UB's expertise in the field of information literacy best match the teaching of the University? What innovative tools could professionalize the UB's work processes and in turn enhance the client-friendliness of its services? And can the UB become a spot for promoting contact, experimenting and the sharing of knowledge?

The establishment of an open access fund, encouraging the use of open educational resources, the setting up of a learning lab/'makerspace' and the further accessibility and digitalization of the collections, especially the Special Collections, are some of the strategies that the UB wants to work on in the coming five years.

This document explains the UB's mission statement and its vision, as well as the leading principles for the realization of the strategic key points. The document first identifies the external factors that affect the services and strategy, and then details the UB's core ambitions. The plan specifies six strategic themes: research support, education support, collection development, heritage, library as a 'third place' and library innovation & ICT. It presents the current situation, vision and objective for each theme and subsequently details the strategic key points.

This document is based on input from the staff of the UB and the Medical Library of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), as well as from other University stakeholders (researchers, lecturers, students and support staff). The input was accumulated during strategy meetings led by Maurits van der Graaf (Pleiade).