Day 1 of Boot Camp II
November 14th, 2006 by Mindy KittayThe first thing that became apparent during the morning lecture was that Planning for Results (PFR) could be an excellent way to approach the many changes that our Library will be going through as a result of becoming a District and receiving additional funding for capital improvements. PFR is a method used to determine how to support new services by reallocating existing resources. PRF is also used as a tool to allocate new resources. It would be beneficial for our library to take this opportunity to do both at the same time.
Of course we all want our Library to be thought of as excellent by our community. Excellence for a library is defined by the PFR as “…when library services match user needs, interests and priorities.” Accomplishing this can be assisted by using Community Based Planning. The Board has already determined that some type of community input will be the basis for determining the direction for capital improvements. My thought is that we could use this opportunity to determine the direction for all aspects of the library. The way it is described in the handout is, “The New Planning for Results process begins by asking key community stakeholders to identify a vision for the community served by the library, which helps library planners determine what the community values and how the library can make a contribution toward achieving the community vision. This, in turn, helps them to answer the questions ‘What difference does the library make?’”
Key community stakeholders in our County might be: a high level administrator from the local community college, the head of Health and Human Resources at the County, the President of Student Council from the largest High Schools, the Editor of the Post Independent, heads of the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Development Leaders, Head of the PTA, Superintendent of Schools, the Head of a Latino Community Service Organization, the President of Alpine Bank, a County Commissioner, etc. This does not mean that the library would not listen to residents opinions regarding capital improvement projects, it would just happen after the Board determined the priorities for the Library as a whole based on the results of the Community Based Planning.
Once the community needs are determined the Board and staff use them to determine where the library fits in and then selects the service responses that the library will focus on. PLA is working on new service responses. Previously there were 13 and we have them listed in our current Strategic Plan. There are 17 proposed service responses. By focusing on a limited number of these it prevents the library from striving to be “all things to all people,” doing all things passably but nothing in an outstanding or excellent manner. They are listed below in alphabetical order: (Remember these are just a first draft – the final Service Responses may look a little different than these.)
1. Become Informed Citizens: Local, National, and World Affairs
2. Build Successful Enterprises: Business and Non-Profit support
3. Connect to the Online World: Internet Utility (the physical connection to the Internet from the Library)
4. Create Young Readers: Emergent Literacy
5. Discover Our Heritage: Genealogy and More
6. Express Creativity: User-Produced Content
7. Explore Our Community: Past, Present and Future
8. Get Fast Facts: Ready Reference
9. Learn to Find, Evaluate, and Use Information: Information Literacy
10. Learn to Read and Write: Adult and Family Literacy
11. Make Career Choices: Job and Career Development
12. Make Informed Decisions: Health, Wealth and Other Life Choices
13. Satisfy Curiosity: Lifelong Learning
14. Stimulate Imagination: Reading, Viewing and Listening for Pleasure
15. Succeed in School: Homework Help
16. Visit a Comfortable Place: Public Spaces
17. Welcome to America: Services for New Immigrants
This translates into finding out our community needs and then determining which ones the library can best fulfill. Staff and the Board use this information to determine which service responses the library will focus on and become “excellent” at. From the service responses specific goals and objectives are set and resources are allocated to achieve those goals. Certainly our capital improvements would tie into this process too.
For example, the Community Based Planning phase may determine that there is a pressing need for the children of Garfield County to receive the education they need to secure employment that provides a living wage. The Board and Staff then determine if the library is suited to meet this community need and what other organizations in the County are working to meet this need. The decision can then be made to either collaborate with the most effective of these organizations or to set the need as a priority service for the library. If they set it as a priority, it would most likely fall under #15: Succeed in School: Homework Help, as the service response. From here service goals would be set. It might look something like “Children in Garfield County will have a wide variety of programs, services and materials to help them succeed in school.” The next step would be to set an objective(s) to measure progress toward reaching the goal. We might measure something such as the number of children accessing our on-line, interactive, tutorial services and set an amount by which that will increase annually. From here, specific resources are allocated to achieve the goal, such as funding in the budget for Tutor.com. And finally there is evaluation: Did we reach our goal? Should it still be a goal? Is there a better or additional way to achieve this goal now?
This is all simplified and there was much discussion on the steps to achieve all that I have mentioned above but I think this gives a general outline of a very exciting and informative day at Boot Camp II!
Mindy
Tags: conferences, PLA, PLA Blog, PLA Boot Camp 2006
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