Director’s Thoughts 10/19/16

Where do I even begin?  This past month has flown by and I finally have fewer meetings and more time to actually start working on plans for next year.  Coming from a children’s librarian position, we would plan a few months out for upcoming programs and as the days would pass I would plan the actual programs.  So in essence, I was never really looking more than three or so months in advance.  We’d sometimes have plans for the upcoming seasons, but those were talked about when the time came.
Now? I’m looking at a year out?  What are my outcomes for December 2017.

A little background for you – our library hasn’t had a strategic plan for at least as long as I’ve been working there 8+ years.  Our mission statement talks solely about books… and I find it hard to educate the public without having a strong strategic plan at our backs. So, for the past month, I’ve been researching strategic plan timelines, what should happen, when it should happen, who should be involved and beginning to create an overall plan to really start this process at the beginning of the new year and have a completed plan in the hands of our stakeholders by mid December of 2017.

This is a HUGE undertaking and one that I need my entire staff behind because everyone will have some say in what happens.  It’s been a daunting task and I’m trying to create a plan that will be useful and successful for our library in the upcoming years. I definitely don’t know a lot about how you go about doing something like this, but I believe that in order to move forward as a library we need to have a strong foundation to stand on adn that’s what a strategic plan will provide.