Building Cathedrals: Mission Statements in Academic Libraries

Abstract

Articulating an organization’s mission using a mission statement is a common method of communicating purpose, attitude, and priorities with stakeholders. While mission statements have been widely studied and written about in business literature, mission statements in libraries have not been studied as deeply. A survey of Association of Research Libraries library directors was conducted in 2014 to determine the current state of academic library mission statements, how they are being created, how they are informing the work of the library, and library directors’ satisfaction with their library’s mission statement.