Creating a Staff-Led Strategic Plan: A Practical Guide for Libraries

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.

Features

• Understand the components of a strategic plan
• Learn steps to complete a staff-led strategic planning process
• Learn specific skills to conduct environmental and stakeholder research to support the planning process
• Learn approaches to workshop and write the plan with colleagues
• Understand how to build communication, transparency, accountability, and assessment into the plan

Imprint: Libraries Unlimited

Published: June 2023

Pages: 217