Dean of Libraries Expresses Appreciation to the University Libraries’ Personnel for their Work and Service during Fiscal Year 2006-2007

I want to express my thanks and appreciation to everyone who works in the University Libraries providing library and information services — professional and paraprofessional personnel, graduate assistants, and student assistants. Each of you, individually and collectively, has provided another year of thoughtful, caring, and creative service for the Ball State University Community.

Over the course of fiscal year 2006-2007, our turnstiles counted 1,301,390 visits to the University Libraries. This is an increase of 2.5% over the previous fiscal year. Thousands of students take advantage of the programs, services, and collections that our personnel manage and provide for research, learning, and classroom instruction.

Over the past 12 months, many times your specific work made a difference in the lives of our customers. Through using the University Libraries, our customers receive many benefits:
• Librarians and other specialists to help them with their research and papers
• Access to rich content for knowledge building and creation
• Physical and digital space for pursuing research and learning projects
• Computers, software, and other technology for their creative use
• Individual and collaborative spaces for group learning, study, and classroom enhancement

We are now in the first few weeks of the new fiscal year. Each of us is busy implementing various plans for excelling again during the academic year to further delight and serve our students and faculty through library and information services. Our objective is to increase the role of the Libraries in the academic life of Ball State University.

As Dean of University Libraries, each day I am grateful for the privilege to serve our students and faculty, and I hope you are, too. Our work — yours and mine — is an opportunity for us to be part of a great university like Ball State and to help others to pursue academic success and achieve their dreams.

As we move into the new fiscal year 2007-2008, I look forward to all of the spectacular happenings that are ahead as we develop and promote the University Libraries for the benefit of our students and faculty.