Planning for Library Services

Libraries continue to represent a community investment in a vision of a better tomorrow through sharing information, knowledge and, hopefully, wisdom. The way the world seeks, finds, and consumes information is rapidly changing and the role of the college or university library with it. Rather than make libraries obsolete, these changes make libraries more important to higher education than ever—as resources for finding and evaluating information, as places to gather and learn with peers, as stewards of important values like intellectual freedom and privacy rights. Planning for libraries is a process of envisioning the future of both the community and the library and setting a direction for library movement toward a chosen future vision. Planning helps the staff and board understand the situation of their community, set priorities, and establish methods for achieving those priorities. The planning document provides a record of the decisions made during that process. The document also becomes a guide for decision-making and action by staff and the board. Size doesn't matter. Every library needs a plan, no matter how small or how large the library and community may be. Library planning establishes how the library (or libraries) will support a higher education institution's strategies and operations. In particular, it looks at how the library can advance a college's or university's learning, research, and/or service programs and initiatives.

This book examines the entire gamut of challenges confronting the planning and development of contemporary libraries; their mission, their roles, and key issues. The book defines the concept and process of strategic planning, explaining its origins in the business world in the 1960s, and adoption by library and information services from the 1970s, with support from professional associations and government bodies in promoting good practice. Identifies pioneering work in the field, outlines typical steps in the planning process, and summarizes benefits to libraries from engaging in strategic planning.

Libraries provide the physical and virtual spaces that are an integral part of an overarching system that provides continuous opportunities for learning from birth to senior age. Libraries continue to undergo tremendous transition as they move to virtual services in response to changes in technology and the expectations of their patrons, and as they facilitate not only the use of existing information, but also production of new information through online communities and efforts to preserve local history. One significant change is the increasing convergence among traditionally different types of libraries in the services they offer. Such convergence includes online access to digital resources, the re-tasking of library space, the need for staff skilled in virtual librarianship and collaborative learning, as well as more customary types of service. Because of the continuing centrality, complexity and diversity of today's knowledge creation and information distribution environments, it is important that our students and residents be equipped with both print and digital literacy skills -- how to find, evaluate, and effectively use information from a variety of sources and formats.