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ENRICHMENT PROGRAM STRATEGIC PLAN 1
Enrichment Program Strategic PlanJennifer Hicks, Kelly Brooks, & Laura Burnett
LIS 805 - Emporia State University
May 8, 2013
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Table Of Contents
Executive Summary ......................................................................................................page 3
Introduction ...................................................................................................................page 3
Current Unit State .........................................................................................................page 4
SWOT Analysis..............................................................................................................page 6
Future Unit State...........................................................................................................page 10
Strategic Plan Implementation....................................................................................page 11
Timeline...............................................................................................................page 11
SMART Goals......................................................................................................page 15Required Resources ...........................................................................................page 16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................page 18
Bibliography..................................................................................................................page 19
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Executive Summary
In todays economy, many libraries are facing ever-tightening budget cuts. This
reality necessitates that management find new ways to demonstrate library efficacy with
less funding; introduction of an enrichment program is ideal for making the most of
existing resources in budget constricted libraries. This strategic plan examines a
librarian unit in a branch of the High Plains Library District and proposes implementation
of an enrichment program between librarians and library associates. The enrichment
program will consist of two phases: 1. a six month period of cross training between staff
members and 2. the long-term formation of teams to create programs and outreach.
Introduction
The High Plains Library District (HPLD) has the following mission: Connecting
communities to information, inspiration and entertainment for life ("Mission, vision,
and," 2012).
The proposed enrichment plan serves to address that goal at its core. The
concept behind the changes suggested in this document has at its roots improving
customer service by improving knowledge of the customers that come into the library.
This benefit is highlighted as being important to HPLD in their values section which
states that, Our customers... receive an exceptional level of personal customer service
("Mission, vision, and," 2012).
Additionally, our program is designed to increase teamwork amongst library staff
fulfilling a value that has been identified by HPLD, Our staff... works as a team to
provide an exceptional level of service to all customers.1 Teamwork has been
1Received from http://www.mylibrary.us/about-us/mission-vision-values
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identified as a weakness among the library staff. Teamwork will primarily be increased
through a large amount of small team learning and large group re-teaching. We
anticipate an increased amount of teamwork and knowledge both of patrons needs and
of new resources being pushed by the library district to improve the level to which
members of the unit will be able to meet the values, visions and mission of the library
district. That is to say, our aim in this plan is to turn rhetoric into reality as we increase
employee satisfaction and retention, provide enhanced library cost benefits, plan for
staff succession, increase productivity and foster deepened respect between employees.
Description:The High Plains Library District (HPLD) is made up of five branch libraries, a virtual
library, bookmobile services and six member libraries governed by their own boards of
trustees. HPLD serves over 217,000 residents of Weld County and parts of neighboring
counties, and covers a geographic area of approximately 4,000 square miles. HPLD
employs nearly 200 employees and the collection amounts to roughly 1 million items
("About us: Our," 2012).
Current State of Targeted Unit
The professional librarians working within one branch library are the targeted unit
for this study. The Library Manager is their supervisor, the Associate Director is the
next line of supervision, and the Executive Director is the supervisor of the Associate
Director. There are three levels of management for this unit.
This group is made up of five librarians with varying years of service and
educational backgrounds. Four of the five have earned an MLS degree, one has
earned an MBA degree, and they all have differing certifications from archives to
school-media specialist. The services that this group is expected to deliver to their
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patrons are the high quality information services using all of the resources that the
library offers to include genealogical research within Weld County. The goal of the
group is to provide services that are responsive to their patron/community needs.
After conducting an analysis of this units task variety, due to the nature of the
multiple reference questions received, number of items evaluated for collection
development purposes, and broad range of community events participated in doing
outreach activities, it became clear that this unit has high variety or high uncertainty. In
order to determine this units task analyzability, it was necessary to break their tasks
down to denote work done for each task. While every Librarian has her own style of
working with patrons, they each follow a understandable sequence of steps that can be
followed in order to answer their questions or meet their information needs. Although
there is variety in the items being evaluated, Librarians are taught a standard way to do
collection development. When doing outreach, being flexible, creative, and responsive
to the needs of the partner organization are important skills. Therefore, the majority of
Librarians tasks have low analyzability or high uncertainty.
When considering how this unit is analyzed against unit structure measures, it
appears that it falls under theorganic structure. Under the category of formalization,
this unit does not need to follow rules or procedures to get patrons questions answered
since they use learned knowledge and skills instead. Under the category of
centralization, this unit is not controlled by their manager but rather coached and
supported to ensure they receive the training and tools they need to perform at their
best level. Under the category of span of control, the manager of this group does not
have a large number of staff, as mentioned earlier, this group is made up of five
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individuals. Finally, under the category of communication, the method of
communication between members of this group is informal and horizontal in that they
work together, share ideas and lessons, and are very collaborative. Therefore, since
there is a high level of task uncertainty and an organic structure, this unit is in fit.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats and Opportunities of the Current State
Strengths:
The strengths of the current state of our organization include the skill and
passion of our employees, our culture and our management. Management in the High
Plains Library District is business-based; personnel are encouraged to focus on
developing management skills, then tailoring those skills specifically to libraries. From
that, the culture as an organization that allows for and encourages on-going
professional development and cross-collaboration with an emphasis on creating a
positive work environment. Key to this positive work environment is incredible
colleagues; all the librarians employed at this branch of the High Plains Library District
are experienced and have a high level of engagement with the library.
Weaknesses:
The weaknesses of the current state of the organization as regards employees
include the positively overwhelming amount of new technology that our librarians and
library associates are expected to know and be able to understand and interact with.
Our librarians, while highly skilled, are very stereotypical librarians. As a unit, they are
lacking in both racial and gender diversity. This impacts us specifically in regard to
language as none of our librarians are bi-lingual. Additionally our librarians have a
tendency towards a high level of pride and fairly low humility.
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The organizational culture is lacking a unified focus and vision for the branch of
the library that delineates its role and interaction with the district goals and mission. The
motivation to share knowledge learned at professional development opportunities is
lacking. The unit tends towards poor delegation of tasks likely because of the inherent
hierarchical culture rather than collaboration.
One of managements largest weaknesses is the inability of middle management
to convince upper management of the benefit of a user-needs analysis. Without a user-
needs analysis, the best efforts of the unit librarians is but a guess as to the actual
needs of the community.
Opportunities:
The Greeley community presents unique opportunities for advocacy and growth
within the library. Patron advocates specific to each branch can promote the library in
places and to people the library is normally unable to reach. Another local resource is
the North Colorado Medical Center, which often utilizes the librarys services. The
library can capitalize on this opportunity to further deepen this relationship.
While there are many information providers that act as competitors to the library
like Google, traditional for profit bookstores, and the university, the library is in the
unique position to attract librarians with the number of library schools in Colorado. The
MLS degree holders have an edge over other information providers in that they are
highly trained, engaged and enthusiastic. The librarys CLIC subscription is another
advantage because the database package is an exponentially more accurate and
reliable information source than Google or other web-based ready reference sources, a
fact that librarians can turn to their advantage.
Threats:
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A negative factor to the units success is the wide geographic area HPLD serves,
which makes it difficult to accurately assess patron needs and to provide meaningful
outreach. A large farming base, East African refugees, Hispanic immigrants, and a large
population in poverty are a very diverse array of patrons to serve. These varying
populations make it difficult to form a unified outreach vision. The lack of a Friends of
the Library foundation is also a missed opportunity for the current state as they provide
a large amount of support both in terms of extra finances to improve the resource base
for fun and interesting projects and in terms of community support for the library.
Finding qualified, passionate employees can be a bit tougher in Greeley than in other
areas in Colorado as it is stereotypically a less desirable location to reside.
Suppliers can be difficult to work with in terms of ebook cost and their availability,
prohibitive costs can restrict user access and service delivery to patrons. There are
also threats in the form of competitors, a universal competitor for libraries is of course
Google, who provides access to information to many - however, they do not have the
personal contact that libraries have. The other information competitor for this library is
the local university library that allows public patrons to access its collection, although
the universitys collection has little in the way of popular materials. These competitors
show us that the service that sets us apart is our customer service and personal contact.
Based on this SWOT analysis of the units current state, it is apparent that there
are many opportunities that have not been capitalized on, and threats that make it even
more important to utilize existing strengths. Change is necessary because there is a
breakdown in many areas of the librarian unit; the librarians have inadvertently
separated themselves from other units in the branch. As a result, there is a lack of
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cross communication between the units which breaks down the ability to share
knowledge, skills, and task expertise.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Proposed Strategic Plan:
Strengths:
Implementing a cross-training enrichment program will solve the problem of a
lack of cross communication by opening lines of communication across two units and
addressing many of the current weaknesses the unit is experiencing. The enrichment
program will facilitate partnerships between library associates and librarians, ultimately
creating a tighter more integrated staff. Library associates will develop technology and
programming skills to better serve the public. Librarians will benefit from having
additional staff trained to assist in planning projects/programs. Librarians will also
benefit from an increased knowledge of the types of questions and concerns being
asked on the floor, which will come from the vast library associate experiences working
with patrons all day in customer service.
Weaknesses:
Librarians may not be motivated to assist in an enrichment program because
they may feel their jobs are threatened, or they may not want to take on the extra work
of designing learning opportunities for their mentees. Library associates may not be
motivated to participate in the program if they feel as though they are asked to do more
work for the same pay, and do not see the other benefits that the program could provide
them.
Due to the vast number of community needs and large amount of ground to
cover with few resources, this program will benefit the goals of the entire library staff.
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Librarians and Library Manager) and 12 LAs will team up and rotate through the entire
group over a six month period.
Time for these meetings will be allocated from 8-9:30AM on Fridays. The
introductory month will be used to put lesson plans together, write assessments, and
build an enrichment rotation schedule. The enrichment schedule rotation will occur in
groups of one Librarian with two LAs until all have spent a month learning with each
other. For example, Librarian A with LA1 and LA2 will team for one month, then
Librarian A with LA3 and LA4 the next month, etc.
Our strategic plan will also make it necessary to alter some current managerial
functions, specifically librarians yearly assessments. Going forward, assessments will
include more emphasis on innovation and teamwork. Additionally, project assignments
will be altered to include the new team pairings and encourage working more closely
with the LAs. Consideration should be given in scheduling to giving the LAs the ability
to work events with the Librarians on occasion.
Implementation
Timeline:
In considering the timeline for the enrichment program the developers have
discussed the benefits of a quick turn-around time for pairing of librarians with library
associates along with the detriments. Timely introduction prevents the program from
being placed on the back burner for all involved. Allowing more time for everyone to get
things settled allows trust to happen increasing likelihood of sharing from both parties
and contributing to a major goal of decreasing hierarchy in the organization. We have
resolved some scheduling issues by taking advantage of a window of time on Friday
mornings that in the past were reserved for staff meetings.
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Additionally, we have considered and suggest implementing a switch from having
a library associate on the floor designated for roving to assigning that task to the
Librarian of the Day (LOD). This should provide enough man hours for the program to
succeed and will be made possible by re-arranging staff schedules to accommodate the
change. The program can be run either every other week to span a year, or as
explained in this document, every week for 6 months.
Introductory month
1st Friday - Program overview, lesson plans, assessments, goals, and outcomes.
2nd Friday - Creation of individual training to be shared (lesson plans written)
3rd Friday - Creation of assessments in specialty areas with answer keys (to live on
Learn Center website for future use and reference)
4th Friday - Present the team pairing schedule and the learning to be shared (new tech
from the District, Librarians specialties, and LA special areas)
Enrichment begins Month 2
Subsequent 1st Fridays for next 5 months - Learning meetings begin; pre-assessment
taken by all; Librarian shares area of expertise
2nd Friday - LAs share area of expertise
3rd Friday - Post assessment taken and graded together; Q and A for better
understanding
4th Friday - no meeting; learning occurred notes will be gathered from each staff
member between rotations to document what was gained from that month's effort.
Enrichment continues Month 3
1st Friday - Teams rotate- pre-assessment taken by all; Librarian shares area of
expertise
2nd Friday - Library Associates share area of expertise
3rd Friday - Post assessment taken and graded together; Q and A for better
understanding
4th Friday - no meeting
Detailed description of reasoning for these timing choices is discussed below as
we move through the implementation of the program in respect to the SMART model.
SMART Milestones
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Measurable:
In the process of discussing specific goals for the program we came to the
conclusion that a learning occurred document would be an important component of the
program, both as something to use as proof of the success of the enrichment program
as a whole and as a way for each librarian and library associate to think about what they
have learned, who they have learned the most from and why. This will be useful for
them after the enrichment wheel is completed and they are asked to complete a
matching application to be paired with the librarian/library associate they will work with
for the on-going component of the enrichment program.
Attainable:
When considering keeping the results desired from our change attainable results,
it is important to keep in mind that the changes are designed to alter the workflow to
result in a better-served patron. While it is difficult to prove that patrons are being better
served it is possible to extrapolate that patrons are being better served by the library the
more they use the library and think of the library as an important and necessary
component of their lives.
Another benefit that can be considered along the lines of improving service to the
patron is a collective accumulation of knowledge sharing between all patron services
staff, such that everyone knows at least a little bit about everything done in the building.
The more a person can answer a question a patron has without having to transfer a
phone call or leave them waiting to discover the answer by asking the librarian or library
associate the better served a patron. A hoped for benefit, but not necessarily a goal is
increasing staff morale and bonding. While staff members are friendly and trusting of
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one another it is our belief that knowledge sharing should increase respect for each
position.
Relevant:
The goals of the enrichment program are certainly worthwhile. The big picture of
the enrichment program is ultimately to better serve the patron. The changes that will
take place as a result of the enrichment program will result in better trained and more
effective employees. Librarians will have less pressure as more staff will be
knowledgeable about technology and program design that currently only librarians are
aware of. The enrichment program is relevant because it also seeks to address current
weaknesses within the library unit and alter them to better fit the librarys mission.
Time-Oriented:
Having specific time-oriented goals for each enrichment team will be important to
keep the focus of the enrichment program on improving library functions rather than
dissolving into a vague team-building exercise. The two parts of the enrichment
program schedule of the enrichment program (see Timeline) will ensure teams are
progressing in the long-term goal of creating library programs, while the shorter term
mentoring wheel will give all participants the education needed to be successful at the
long term goal.
SMART Goals
Short term goals to be achieved during the six-month enrichment wheel include
increasing the technical skills & knowledge of library associates by a minimum of 50%
(calculated by using pre and post tests). Specific skills being targeted include
increasing their knowledge of using library databases and other digital library services.
We also expect to increase library associate and librarians knowledge of basic
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operations by 50% (pre- and post tests). The cross communication should result in the
added benefit of increasing librarians awareness of patron daily needs. We also expect
to raise awareness of each participating employees unique responsibilities in the library.
Long term goals to be achieved after the enrichment wheel is completed include
library associates being exposed to program coordination and be empowered to put on
a program along with program attendance will increase by 20% as a result of librarians
better understanding of patron needs. A minimum of five new programs will be
implemented after library associates and librarians form established teams.
Required ResourcesMoney:
For many cash-strapped libraries, the cost of paying employees over and above
their regularly scheduled hours often prohibits introducing an innovative program like
the enrichment program. However, the budget of this particular unit is fortunate enough
to withstand some schedule changes in order to implement the program. Upfront, the
program will cost some money in terms of paying employees for any extra hours
required to spend on the enrichment program. There will be costs associated with time
the management spends in organizing and planning the program as well. The program
creators believe that the future benefits of the program outweigh the drawbacks of
paying for extra training. Tentatively speaking, this program may one day allow the
library to double the number of programs it currently offers by educating and
empowering library associates to create and run programs. This is definitely a cost
benefit especially as the fiscal environment of the library may one day change for the
worse, especially as the library funding is in large part connected to the oil and gas
industry that is based around Greeley. The life-span of the industry will be around
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another 15-20 years, so it is important to have measures already in place before funding
becomes lean.
Human Resources:
As stated above, there will be a large amount of time invested in this program
from a human resources perspective. Management involvement will be important
especially in the early days of the programs implementation. If successful, the program
may be turned over to the human resources department of the district to be further
developed as a district wide program.
This program will capitalize on the strong human resources that are already
present in the unit, for example, the passion and motivation of the MLS-degreed
librarians for their jobs. The enrichment program will be an opportunity for ambitious
library associates to demonstrate their interest in the position and be a useful self-
advocacy tool when time for yearly performance reviews.
Training:
Two levels of training are required for the program. The first round of training will
occur between management and the librarians. This training will prepare librarians to
successfully meet the desired outcomes of the enrichment program. Some of this
training will include coaching the librarians in writing lesson plans, task delegation, and
organizing and planning. Ideally it will address some of the weaknesses in the unit
culture previously mentioned in the SWOT analysis, i.e., hierarchical vs collaborative
culture. Essentially, the librarians will be trained in more managerial-like functions to in
turn coach the library associates to take a larger share of needs analysis and designing
programs. The second tier of training will be the training that the librarian will provide to
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each of the library associates as to their expectations and required duties within the
enrichment wheel.
Conclusion
This strategic plan was developed as a first step in fulfilling the librarys
commitment to the patrons of the High Plains Library community.
The Enrichment Program at the High Plains Library district was originally
designed to encourage innovation in the librarian unit. The benefits of this program,
however, will extend much farther than just one single unit. While the start up costs of
time and effort are an initially large investment, within one year the program goals of
increasing technical and procedural knowledge and increased programming will be
achieved. Successful program implementation may serve as a pilot for other branches
and effect a widespread impact on the district.
Ultimately, however, this is still only a plan. Successful implementation will
require ongoing monitoring by management and open communication between staff and
management as the plan progresses and adjusts to fit the needs of the groups it is
intended to assist. The strategic plan will be monitored every three months to ensure
the program is on track for the first year and once every year after with hopes that the
program has successfully transformed the rhetoric of the HPLD mission statement into
reality.
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Location where Enrichment plan will be implemented in 2014Centennial Park Library - HPLD
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Now hiring @ your library: Mentoring. (2008). Retrieved from
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