GREG REIHMAN, PH.D. Vice Provost, Library and Technology Services Director, Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning Academic Year 2020-2021 was a year when many (but not all) Lehigh students, faculty, and staff were back on campus; when some (but not all) classes were in-person; when most (but not all) students had campus access; when many (but not all) buildings were open; and when all (definitely all) faculty, students, and staff adapted, again and again, to seemingly ever-changing conditions. We had, as a university, moved from spring 2020’s fully remote posture into a year that demanded flexibility. The terms Hybrid, HyFlex, and FlexPlace entered our collective vocabulary. For all of us in Library and Technology Services, these changes meant adapting our work to meet the diverse and changing needs of our campus community: we offered teaching workshops and consultations to help faculty teach well whether inperson or remote; we continued helping students develop writing, library research, digital scholarship, and computing skills; and we ensured everyone had access to the scholarly materials, software resources, technical equipment, and support they needed to continue their work. Our Libraries were always among the first places to reopen for the Lehigh community and we were always among the last to close during periods of temporary campus shutdowns. We provided students safe places to read and research, collaborate and create, study and socialize. Across LTS, we also took on new roles as we adapted an app for daily symptom checks, reminded students to mask-up, volunteered at testing tents, and developed the systems and dashboards that proved crucial to the COVID-19 Response Team management of Lehigh’s pandemic response. MESSAGE FROM THE VICE PROVOST And, through it all, we in LTS continued to innovate, upgrade, and improve our own internal operations. We were one of the very first large academic libraries in the world to fully migrate to the open source library services platform FOLIO; we completed the multi-year project of moving Banner to the cloud; we built Hawk, a new high-performance research computing cluster; we implemented new information security systems to meet evolving cybersecurity threats; we hosted timely conversations about bioethics, anti-racism, and social justice; and we rolled out new software, eBooks, and scholarly materials to meet emerging needs of our faculty and students. I’m glad you’re here to flip through these pages of our Annual Report. As you do, you’ll see examples of how we in Library and Technology Services provided expertise and support for the teaching, learning, research, and administrative missions of our university. You’ll also see how our work was guided throughout by a love for Lehigh and compassion for all members of our community. And I think you’ll see why I’m so deeply proud of our LTS staff for everything we accomplished in Academic Year 20-21. W E L C O M E 2 | L I BRARY AND TECHNOLOGY SERV I CES
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