Gainesville: Cannon Memorial's Mission Statement

Mission Statement

Our mission is to cultivate knowledge, information literacy, and critical thinking in our Saint Leo University community. We are committed to providing information resources, quality services, and expertise to all faculty, students, staff, and community patrons. Daniel A. Cannon Memorial Library serves people of all faiths, grounded in the 1,500-year-old Benedictine tradition which recognizes the dignity, value, and gifts of all people.

Saint Leo Libraries and Benedictine Values

Saint Leo University Libraries provide resources and services needed by Saint Leo University’s students, faculty, and staff pursuing their educational, professional, and/or institutional goals, seeking an understanding of themselves, their world and their Creator.

Library Faculty and Administrators with the aid of Library Staff support general education and discipline-based instruction, as well as organizational and scholarly communication - all with the intention of helping individuals use information resources independently, critically, responsibly, and efficiently, in other words - expanding information literacy within the university community.


The Benedictine values on which this mission statement is based include:

Excellence

The Libraries are committed to providing outstanding services and diverse collections that are essential for learning, that offer research assistance and information of the highest quality, and that foster the creation of new knowledge.

Community

The Libraries seek to provide hospitable environments in their physical locations and online that encourage free and open inquiry and that nurture a sense of belonging, cultural awareness, and social responsibility.

Respect
The Libraries regard the dignity and intellectual pursuits of their internal and external community members as sacred, and as such will strive to treat with fairness and with compassion all that make use of the services and collections and all that work to provide them.

Personal Development
The Libraries maintain that the balanced development of the human person is what motivates and sustains in large part their mission. To that end the Libraries encourage and will continue to encourage professional development opportunities and continuing education for their faculty, staff, and administrators so that all possess their respective specialized skills to function in an increasingly complex environment.

Responsible Stewardship

The Libraries are and will continue to be resourceful with their budgets and acquisitions, and will optimize relationships with other libraries in the community, the states in which they are located, and nationally.

Integrity 
Collections and services, to ensure that they respond legally and consistently in word and deed to the privacy concerns, the changing instructional needs, and the reasonable organizational and scholarly demands of the university community.