UC Berkeley Library Website Mission, Goals & Scope

Guiding Principles

MISSION

The UC Berkeley Library website facilitates research, teaching, and learning on the part of the UC Berkeley community. It is a gateway to research and instructional materials, both online and in print, and functions as a primary location for information about the Library's collections, services and staff. Pages within the Library web are themselves guides to and integral parts of our collections.

Through web development, the Library furthers the goal to serve the diverse and changing needs of the UC Berkeley community. User self sufficiency and ease of access are promoted by designing a single, coherent, remotely accessible service that synthesizes the variety of information choices available to the user.

GOALS

The goals of the UC Berkeley Library Web Site are to:

• Select and present access to quality resources.
• Encourage compliance with ADA Guidelines for the Web.
• Organize information in ways that are convenient and useful for our community.
• Educate the UC Berkeley community in the effective discovery of information.
• Promote the UC Berkeley Library and its services.
• Enable user self-sufficiency.
• Encourage user feedback and communication with the Library.

Long-term Goals

• Explore customizable access to varying constituents according to their needs. Due to the vastness of the resources offered electronically through the Library, and the different types of users and their varying needs, systems that will allow access to resources dependent upon the type of user and then further allow the user to streamline their information retrieval needs is the optimum goal.
• Provide accurate statistics and feedback as a means for staff to improve websites.
• Meet future content delivery challenges, such as delivery via email, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) for Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's) and wireless access to the Web.
• Provide improved access integration for all types of resources.
• Provide access to locally created and licensed digital collections, including images and full text.
• Provide 2nd generation search capabilities. The ability to search across material types and across databases. Move towards providing intelligent search capabilities.
• Incorporate new technology as it becomes available.
• Possibly redesign the Library Staff website.

SCOPE

The Library Web as referred to here includes all Web pages and web-accessible materials intended for public use that are created by the UC Berkeley Library (i.e. Doe and Moffitt Libraries and subject specialty libraries) and/or mounted on its servers.

This includes web-accessible library and archive catalogs, locally created databases of text, images, and sounds, online exhibits, teaching materials, and other resources. It also includes documents related to library services, policies, and procedures intended for public consumption. The definition does not include the websites of the Affiliated Libraries, other external websites that are linked from the Library Web, or commercial databases and other electronic resources not created or maintained by the UC Berkeley Library.

The Library Staff Web, comprising pages developed by Library staff for Library staff, is not part of the public Web. In those cases where staff documents are also of interest to the public, pages will be made available on the public side of the Web per procedures and policies established by the Web Advisory Group.