Strategic Planning for Public Libraries


Book Description

Strategic Planning for Public Libraries is a complete planning toolkit. Each purchase comes with a downloadable supplemental folder full of reusable templates, worksheets, as well as real-life examples from other libraries to help guide the reader through the planning process. This book provides a framework that any library, whether it serves urban, suburban, or rural communities, can use as a basis for its strategic planning.




Strategic Planning for Results


Book Description

The PLA Results Series has long served to help public librarians envision, evaluate, and respond to community needs with distinctive programs and services. Building from this proven model, Strategic Planning for Results is the fully revised version of Planning for Results, the foundational book in this groundbreaking series. Sandra Nelson, senior editor of the Results Series, focuses on the essential steps to draft a results-driven, strategic planning process that libraries can complete over the course of four months, regardless of organizational structure or size. Reflecting on the current planning environment for public libraries, Nelson makes the case for strategic rather than long-term planning and includes a wealth of information about understanding and managing the change process to help staff Assess the change-readiness of the library and preparing staff to implement forthcoming changes Simplify data collection and decision-making processes through the use of 14 reproducible workforms Identify service priority options and reach agreement as a group Successfully present and communicate within their library Including the newly revised and adopted Public Library Service Responses, along with case studies, workforms, and tool kits, Strategic Planning for Results offers librarians a wealth of ideas to effectively meet changing community needs.







Strategic Planning for Social Media in Libraries


Book Description

As we come to appreciate the opportunities that social media opens up, this practical guide provides a scalable, step-by-step plan for creating and maintaining a successful library social media strategic plan. You'll find detailed tips and advice on strategizing for social media services in a way that guides employee decision-making, maximizes efficiency, creates positive patron outcomes, protects against legal repercussions, and builds opportunities for flexibility, change, and new social media platform testing. Author Sarah Steiner guides you through the key steps to build your strategic plan, including how to segment your audience, select a target audience, use focus groups and poll patrons, conduct a SWOT analysis to provide internal strength and support to your plan, and create a mission and vision plan for using social media.




Strategic Planning and Management for Library Managers


Book Description

Libraries enter into strategic planning by a variety of routes, from dynamic technology and rising costs to budget cuts and pressure for change. In this book, Joe Matthews guides library managers towards a greater understanding of the role and attendant responsibilities of strategic planning. Academic, public, and special librarians alike will benefit from Matthews' cogent explanations, real-life examples, and time-tested recommendations. In the process, Matthews addresses such intrinsic questions as: Why is it important that I add strategic thinking to my managerial arsenal? How will strategic planning benefit my library, and is there more than one way to go about it? What is the best way of monitoring and updating our strategic plan for maximum effect? In each case, he debunks false impressions, attends to the goal of providing good service, and identifies at least one new way to communicate the library's strategic importance in the lives of its customers. Academic, public, and special librarians alike will benefit from Matthews' cogent explanations, real-life examples, and time-tested recommendations.




Strategic Planning for Academic Libraries


Book Description

Written by a team of authors with decades of library administration experience between them, this powerful resource enables academic libraries to produce plans that will offer directional guidance to employees while also demonstrating the library's power to meet institutional goals.




Managing the Successful School Library


Book Description

More than just a compendium of management theories, this book provides much food for thought that will help readers gain important insights into their own roles as school library managers and leaders.




Blueprint for Your Library Marketing Plan


Book Description

In these challenging times, libraries face fierce competition for customers and funding. Creating and implementing a marketing plan can help libraries make a compelling case and address both issues—attracting funding and customers by focusing on specific needs. But where and how do you start?




Creating a Staff-Led Strategic Plan


Book Description

Taking a staff-led approach, this book helps libraries of all types create their own meaningful and authentic strategic plans while demystifying a process that can bring many benefits to the organization. With dwindling budgets to pay for consultants and a growing interest in collaboration across the organization, libraries are increasingly taking a do-it-yourself approach to strategic planning. This book takes a step-by-step approach to grassroots strategic planning for libraries of all types. The authors, who led a successful strategic planning process at their own library, provide practical advice and detailed information to guide library personnel through their own process. Topics include aligning with institutional and community values, creating vision and mission statements, researching stakeholder needs, conducting environmental scans, collaborative drafting of the plan, communication strategies, and implementation and assessment of the plan. Each chapter helps librarians create a strategic plan for a broad spectrum of libraries, including K–12, post-secondary, public, and special libraries. A unique feature of the book is its emphasis on the ways in which different library types can collaborate to meet shared goals. This book is a one-stop-shop, providing everything library staff will need to create a strategic plan without searching for additional sources.




Developing Strategic Marketing Plans that Really Work


Book Description

Public libraries are increasingly aware of the need for good marketing. Underlying this is a need for competence in marketing planning. Many government and other reports stress the need to get public libraries back into the lives of their users and potential users and this requires significant marketing effort. However, it quickly becomes apparent to public librarians that marketing is far more than simply creating a set of leaflets for their marketing communications. What they need is a simple, practical guide to the whole marketing planning process from goals to implementation of marketing strategies and communications. And along the way they need to troubleshoot the barriers that such activities meet. This highly practical and down-to-earth book, with free downloadable templates and forms on the web, will de-mystify the marketing planning process and set it in the context of modern public library services. Through a series of easy to implement process steps and ideas the reader will see not just what is possible but what is likely to work quickly, and deliver real impact on performance indicators, in a public library context. The book is structured as follows: strategic marketing planning for public libraries: an introduction ambition as the basis for marketing planning making sense of the market for your public library services creating segment-specific value propositions for users and non-users priorities: making sound choices clear objectives and winning strategies attention-grabbing marketing communications implementation and quick progress. Readership: The text is fully international in scope and is written for all those practitioners who recognize the importance of marketing in shaping and positively influencing the direction of public library services.