About Us
We acknowledge that we are gathered on ancestral lands, on Treaty One Territory. These lands are the heartland of the Métis people. We acknowledge that our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation.
Vision and Mission
The library will be a place of engagement, learning, creation, and belonging. Through ongoing dialogue with our campus community, we strive to contribute meaningfully to diverse literacies, responsible critical inquiry, and equitable access to knowledge, both at the University of Winnipeg and beyond.
The library’s mission is to sustainably develop, preserve and make accessible UWinnipeg’s knowledge and cultural resources in support of teaching and research. We are a core academic service that provides the spaces and services necessary for our students, faculty, and community researchers to discover, create, access and use these resources.
Our Work
- Collection Development: We select, acquire, and maintain scholarly resources that support teaching and research.
- Discovery and Access: We build and manage the infrastructure needed to make academic resources available.
- Academic Engagement: We help students, faculty, and the institution navigate a global, increasingly complex information system.
Our People
Reporting to the Provost and Vice-President, Academic, the Dean of the Library is responsible for UWinnipeg's resource units such as the Library, Archives, Oral History Centre, and Art Gallery. The Dean, along with the Associate Dean of the Library, work in partnership with campus stakeholders to ensure the library's vision and mission are fulfilled.
Our Academic Librarians are specialists who serve as strategic heads of the library's departments and initiatives. They also provide collections development, instruction, and research support for university programs and the wider UWinnipeg academic community. Academic librarians all hold a graduate degree in the applied disciplines of library, information, or archival science, in addition to other credentials, relevant skills, and experience. As such, they participate in research and scholarship within their field(s) and contribute to university governance through committees and other service work.
Our Library Assistants, Technicians, and Systems Team are support staff working across public services, acquisitions, collections, metadata, program delivery, library systems, and administration. They are often the first point-of-contact for library users and are key to keeping library services running smoothly. They have a range of backgrounds and education, and many are graduates of library technician diploma programs.
Annual Reports
The UW Library released its first official annual report for fiscal year 2023-24. Our goal is not only to provide facts and data, but to tell our students, faculty, staff and members of the community about the great work that we do.
Library Focus Areas
The Library Focus Areas are high-level priorities that help steer operational planning. Understanding that campus priorities evolve over time, the Focus Areas are aspirational guidelines intended to shine a light on the work we do and the initiatives we are focused on.
Select an area to learn more about our plans:
- Renew the library facility to provide the workspaces and technologies students require to be successful.
- Refine the library’s community access policies in alignment with campus strategies.
- Continue to ensure visibility of Indigenous perspectives in displays, spaces and collections.
- Create and safeguard access to spaces, resources, and services for equity-deserving students, faculty, staff, and visitors.
- Continue to assess and improve accessibility for collections, services, and spaces, both physical and digital.
- Review front-line service models to match student needs with library supports.
- Strengthen partnerships with student services across campus.
- Bring the library to students at the point of need.
- Integrate Indigenous knowledges across the library’s services, resources and spaces.
- Align the library’s reference and instructional services with UW academic integrity strategies.
- Build Open Access infrastructure and resources, locally and nationally.
- Partner with other universities and organizations in sharing collections.
- Promote and support the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER).
- Enhance subscription assessment workflows to ensure evidence-based investment.
- Strengthen capacity to improve discoverability of special collections and Indigenous resources.
- Collaborate with Research Office to provide service at point of need.
- Develop and implement an Open Access strategy.
- Help UWinnipeg-run scholarly journals remain sustainable.
- Upgrade and promote WinnSpace for maximum value to authors.
- Support and promote Indigenous research methods, relationality, and Indigenous led initiatives surrounding data sovereignty (OCAP - Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession).
- Prepare and launch a library and archives digital asset management strategy.
- Ensure adequate physical storage for UW library materials, archives and art collections.
- Ensure digital preservation tools and infrastructure for theses, scholarly works, digital archives, and oral histories.
- Develop protocols surrounding Indigenous cultural materials.
- Ensure strong stewardship, preservation and promotion of special collections.