Peabody Library Purpose Statement
As a division of the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, Peabody Library’s primary purpose is to support, engage, and advance the curriculum, research, and co-curricular endeavors of the Peabody College of Education & Human Development. We passionately embrace the strategic directives of the Heard Libraries, Peabody College, and Vanderbilt University through innovative and patron-focused services, collections, and instructional partnerships, by adapting our services to promote new ways of learning and engaging with research materials.
The Peabody Library staff are committed to maintaining inclusive, safe, and welcoming spaces by providing resources, services, and programs that promote and reflect diversity, inclusion, social justice, and wellness for the campus community. We seek to navigate the most pressing issues society is facing today by identifying solutions to promote education and human development.
Peabody Library Values & Priorities
- Develop collaborative partnerships with Peabody faculty, staff, and students on their research and teaching activities.
- Work closely with Vanderbilt Libraries colleagues across the system to identify innovative opportunities for outreach, teaching, and collection building in support of the University’s trans-disciplinary efforts.
- Regularly engage with Peabody academic departments to learn about current initiatives with which the Library can assist.
- Benefit from new ideas and extend the reach of Peabody Library staff beyond the Vanderbilt campus by collaborating with the Nashville community and partner institution libraries.
- Consistently seek out new engagement opportunities at Peabody and across the Vanderbilt campus, with the goal of building personal, mutually beneficial relationships.
- Focus holistically on outreach that supports both curricular efforts and co-curricular activities (outreach beyond the classroom).
- Move beyond the library and go where the students are by offering on-site office hours and online consultations.
- Continually devise new ways to engage with students, faculty, and staff, showing creativity and thoughtfulness when planning new endeavors.
- Employ a multi-dimensional approach to learning & service by having staff available through a variety of formats and locations to best meet the needs of our stakeholders.
- Provide unbiased service and meet patrons’ needs respectfully and compassionately.
- Remain adaptable in serving library patrons; strive to meet the needs that exist, not preconceived expectations of services.
- Maintain awareness of issues related to social justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility and endeavor to promote and support opportunities to serve marginalized communities and create a welcoming library.
- Build cognitive thinking skills for how to use the library’s collections, services, and research tools, both through self-education and independent scholarly pursuit.
- Influence information literacy across campus and beyond by creating learning opportunities that engage learners in a variety of topics and modalities.
- Provide teaching and learning opportunities on digital literacy, educational technology, and critical research skills at different scales.
- Create teaching opportunities wherever our work takes us (in classrooms, in the stacks, at the service desk, across campus), connecting patrons to the resources, people, and collections that will help them accomplish their learning goals.
- Provide equitable access to materials that support teaching and research in evolving subject areas of the curriculum.
- Build the library’s collection to meet patrons’ needs by being responsive to changes in the curriculum and research within the five Peabody academic departments.
- Develop, maintain, and grow Peabody Library’s unique collections (i.e. the youth collection, Curriculum Materials Center, and the test collection).
- Facilitate dialogue and push the boundaries of the emerging trends in research in order to support the world-class research that occurs at Peabody and Vanderbilt.
- Foster the development of an innovative library staff that are not afraid to adapt and experiment with new services and outreach models.
- Continually adapt to changes and trends in higher education in order to create a library environment that fosters creative dialogue, research, interdisciplinary pursuits, and cultural activities.
- Persevere to respond to and embrace emerging digital learning and new literacies, experimenting with educational technologies that advance learning and research.
- Preserve the historic and traditional aspects of the academic library setting (e.g. serious research and inquiry), while adapting to new ways of learning and engaging with research materials.
Connecting with Peabody College
Engaging and collaborating with Peabody College’s students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners is core to the work of the Peabody Library. See below for several examples of the connections between the Library and our stakeholders.
Dr. Hasina Mohyuddin (Director of Office of Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, Peabody College and Research Associate, Vanderbilt University) reflects on her interactions with Peabody Library staff (in particular, subject librarian Leslie Foutch) during the course of her academic and professional career at Peabody in the essay, A Transforming Bridge: How Peabody Library Elevated My Academic Experience.
In this video, Peabody graduate and professional students share how Peabody Library has shaped their campus experience.