Whew! It’s Thursday! Hard to believe there’s only one day left. Today was just as informative and useful as the past three days have been. Sandra and June have been stressing many important points, most of which (as they have reminded us more than once) is not rocket science. Many of the things they’re teaching us are almost if not common sense, but rarely happen in many libraries because people are too set in their ways or afraid of change or unwilling to do their jobs as managers and hold people accountable.

• If you do not reallocate resources, everything you’ve done up to this point is academic (and/or pointless). If you choose not to act in the face of fear (of change), you as a manger have failed to do your job. Any movement forward is better than standing still (or moving backward) at this point. If you ask for help from your community/board/staff/etc, you must be prepared to act on what you hear.
• For some us, for the rest of our careers, we’ll be looking at cutbacks. Most of us have no idea what assumptions were used when creating our original library budgets. This is also true for facilities and resources and technology. It’s not okay to say that children’s services is your highest priority and put the majority of your collection money toward adult non-fiction. The money and resources must follow your plan! We become managers because we’re good librarians. We became librarians because we didn’t want to screw around with money. But we cannot opt out of this part of our jobs – we need to learn/develop and get comfortable with it.
• Questions to ask ourselves:
  • Do I know what percentage of the total budget is allocated for children vs. adult?
  • Do I know what percentage of the total budget is allocated for salaries vs. collections vs. etc.?
  • (and so forth)
• All departments/etc should receive financial reports/updates monthly. What information is provided should be reevaluated regularly so people get the info they need (and unnecessary or un-useful information is not collected).
• We need to have a better understanding of what our staff does so we can clearly communicate what we want them to do within the structure of the new plan.
• Don’t collect data you don’t need. Decide what you want to know and then figure out what you need to collect to get the answer you want. Get the very minimum. If existing records can provide you with what you need, stop there. If existing records do not give you the info you want or the result is ambiguous, drill deeper in the areas you need more information. This data mining model is described in detail in Planning for Results. If you’re going to go to the trouble to collect data, you need to commit to rigorously analyzing it. It makes sense to have people who do not have a vested interest/point of view collect the data.
• This is about data analysis, not data collection.
• We need to join the rest of the world and not get bogged down with the personalities at our libraries.
• When it comes time to tell staff what is going to change, if they’ve been involved from the beginning (whether they’re happy about it or not), you already have the framework for this discussion. You will be able to make progress.
• Many libraries have never had to self-evaluate, especially when it comes to how much they spend on this vs. that. Many libraries are staffed primarily by Change Survivors – people who have been through change but have just let it wash over them without actually participating.
• Most libraries need to stop allocating money to big chunks of the collection. This can be scary but if you’re truly going to meet your service responses, you must do it. It will benefit your community and your responsibility is to them.
• In the planning process sometimes contention is good, because it can lead to results.