Planning (L4L)
General Resources
Imperatives
for Planning, Wisconsin Public Library Standards
An excellent, brief overview of the planning process that incorporates the
use of the Standards both to assess where the library is now and to establish
goals and objectives.
Strategic
Planning in Smaller Nonprofit Organizations
"This short guide is designed to help board members and the staff of smaller
nonprofit organizations develop strategic plans that can help them strengthen
and sustain their organization's achievements." An excellent guide to planning
that is practical. It suggests an eleven step process and includes questions
to ask and exercises to do at each step. One important feature is its description
of how to do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis
and, even more importantly, how to use it in planning.
Lessons
Learned: A Planning Toolsite
This site, provided by the National Arts Endowment, contains a variety of good
articles on the planning and budgeting process. They are, of course, oriented
to planning in the arts, but most articles and the insights contained in them
apply to any context. Be
sure to notice the articles on facilitation of meetings.
The
Planning Cycle: A Planning Process for Middle-Sized Projects
Oriented toward project planning and looked at within a broad context
of management tools. The evaluation tools suggested are more elaborate than
libraries generally use, but definitely worth browsing. From Mind
Tools, a fascinating site to explore; its purpose used to be described
as "helping you to think your way to an excellent life." Now it's defined
more prosaically as "Mind Tools mission is to help you understand the essential
skills and techniques that will help you to excel in your career, whatever
your profession."
Resources on Specific Planning Topics
Public
Library Space Needs: A Planning Outline
The document developed by Anders Dahlgren when he was a consultant at
the Division that is the standard guide to evaluating and planning for
your space needs. "This
outline defines six broad types of library space-collection space, reader seating
space, staff work space, meeting space, special use space, and nonassignable
space (including mechanical space). It suggests how library goals relating
to each of these areas can be projected to meet future needs and provides a
way to translate resulting service assumptions into space needs."
Disaster
Planning for Libraries and Archives: Understanding the Essential Issues
A disaster plan
is a document which describes the procedures devised to prevent and
prepare for disasters, and those proposed to respond to and recover
from disasters when they occur. This paper, last updated in 1998, concentrates
on the management aspects of disaster planning. For more resources
on this topic, see Disaster
Planning.
Library
Technology Planning
From Bob Bocher at DLTCL. "Computing and networking technologies, in all
their various forms, are becoming an integral part of almost all library
services. To help make certain these technologies are used in an efficient
and cost effective manner, libraries should develop a technology plan.
Ideally, any technology plan will be part of a broader long-range plan
encompassing all library services. This page is designed to provide basic
information on the planning process and assist actual development of the
plan.
Developing
Effective Technology Plans
This brief article is incomplete and directed toward school libraries, but
makes several excellent points to remember in planning. For 'curriculum' just
substitute 'library services'.
What
are the Individual Roles in the Planning Process?
Why is it important to involve people in the planning process? Who should be
included? This is part of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management's FAQ on Strategic
Planning that has more information you may want to browse, including the
useful comments on mission
statements and vision
statements.
Samples
Public
Library Mission Statements
From the Mid-Hudson Library System, including mission statements from MHLS
and from other libraries.
Appleton
Public Library Long Range Plan, 2005-07
Municipal Population: c. 75,000
Multnomah
County (OR) Library Strategic Plan
Note especially the presentation of this plan.
Supporting public libraries in Outagamie and Waupaca counties