Library Re-organization: Evolving the Leddy Library
Technological advances have profoundly changed how people interact with information in the previous two decades. Much of the work of academic libraries has shifted from a print to a digital environment. The continuing evolution of print to digital is impacting all aspects of the library’s roles and responsibilities with the university: from acquisitions to access and discovery, from scholarly communications and publishing to instruction and bibliometrics.
This shift has required libraries to carefully review existing structures to evolve to the changing landscape. As such, the Leddy Library will be undergoing planning to implement changes in the organizational service structure to better align with the mission and strategic goals of the University and the Library and to maintain services and collections in the evolving landscape of academic libraries.
As our programs, services, and resources have incrementally evolved over the years, the organizational structures that support them have remained unchanged. These structures are limiting our ability to contribute our best to the university community.
We anticipate changes to some services and librarian responsibilities over the next two years, with a brand-new service structure to be fully launched in Spring 2026.
Evolving the Service Structure
To support evolving services, many academic libraries in North America have shifted away from a liaison structure, where academic departments are assigned a single librarian as their point of contact and service towards a model where librarians with specialized expertise within specialized functional areas can be accessed by any campus member. The liaison structure has been a longstanding system in Leddy Library, and while the structure intends to provide specialized disciplinary support, it requires individual librarians to bring to bear all the specialized expertise available in the library. This includes everything from bibliometrics to knowledge synthesis, from digital literacies to scholarly publishing, from collection development to information literacy, from reference to bibliometrics.
Leddy Library has begun exploring ways in which teams of librarians and staff coalesce around service areas that require specialized expertise. In addition to deepening the expertise of the librarians’ information context, these structures provide greater continuity, less disruption with changes to workload assignments, and more consistent access to services.
The Leddy Library is undergoing planning to adapt its structure to provide more consistent and uninterrupted service and outreach across the university.
Background and Rationale for Change
The impact of technology on academic libraries over the last two decades has made a profound shift in our collections and services. While print collections will remain a part of the foundation of academic libraries, technology has changed the roles, responsibilities, and services of academic libraries, like Leddy Library. Academic libraries now provide critical services in digital scholarship, scholarly publishing, digital literacies, open educational resources, and research data management.
As our programs, services, and resources have transformed, many of the organizational structures at Leddy Library have remained unchanged. The existing structures and processes at Leddy Library are limiting our ability to serve the university community to its fullest within the current context. A key impetus to explore this change now was the development of the University’s Aspire Strategic Plan (2023-2028). The strategic plan serves as an opportunity to consider what organizational structures are required to contribute to the university’s goals and meet the aspirations of Leddy Library.
The strategic plan highlighted the potential of Leddy Library to provide critical support for the research mission of the university. Research services are recognized as a key area of growth for academic libraries. While we have made important contributions to the research mission of the University through initiatives such as the library’s institutional research and data repositories, the Leddy Library has not had adequate structures to contribute fully the services expected of today’s research libraries. Support for research has been dispersed in pockets across the organization making it difficult to plan, market, and coordinate these supports and services. It is anticipated that our new structure will address these challenges by building focus and expertise.
The Aspire Strategic Plan also underlined the need for Leddy Library to support the learning needs of students, as well as professional development for faculty and staff. A redefined structure will help better position the library to more systematically and strategically engage and integrate information literacies within and outside of the curriculum.
Connecting people with information remains a core library function and supports the university's teaching and research missions. The move to a predominantly digital information environment, and the profound effects of the open access movement have fundamentally transformed the scholarly publishing system, and in turn, how academic libraries build collections. The invisible work that sustains our collections has become more nuanced and data-driven, requiring libraries to adapt their processes and approaches. A new structure will give us the flexibility to engage with these challenges.
The focus on people and community within the University of Windsor’s strategic plan highlighted the need for a more coordinated approach for user outreach and engagement. Two of the most visible and busy library spaces are the Information Desk and the website. The library welcomes thousands of members of the campus community physically and virtually every day; however, Leddy Library does not currently have a structure that can fully leverage the potential for engagement with the university community through these and other user points. The new structure will allow library staff and librarians to take a coordinated approach to user-focused programming in the library, including events, exhibits, outreach activities, user experience, and front-line service.
When will the changes take effect?
Planning for change in Leddy Library’s organizational structure is a significant undertaking and we do ask for generosity and understanding as we work through the transition period. A full plan is expected to be released by Fall 2025. Implementation will be staggered with full implementation planned for Spring 2026. Over this period, Leddy Library will provide updates and opportunities for communication to better understand the needs of campus.
As a first step of this process, for the 2024-2025 academic year, the workload assignments of some of Leddy library’s librarians and academic staff have changed to focus their efforts on services to support our research, teaching and learning, collections, and public service contributions to the University.
This will be a period of transition at Leddy Library, as leadership, faculty, and staff begin to collegially build an organizational, leadership, and service structure. Rest assured, our commitment to the university’s mission and to supporting the students, faculty, and staff of the University of Windsor is steadfast.
Faculty, students, and staff members can continue to connect with the library for support in teaching, learning, and research by through individual contacts listed on the library website. The Leddy Library website continues to be a key conduit to connect you with a wide array of services and resources:
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