Competency D
apply the fundamentals principles of planning, management and marketing/advocacy
Perhaps some of the most underrated aspects of librarianship are planning, management, and marketing/advocacy. Indeed it is hard to imagine for most people that a library would need to have a plan of any kind in order to prosper. But libraries and information centers are like any other organization that is centered around providing services to customers. Add to this the high cost of operating and maintaining a library coupled with the facts that libraries usually depend on public funding and operate as not-for-profit businesses and the need for planning becomes apparent.
As I came to realize through my assignments in order to grow, reach their service goals, and closely follow their mission statements, libraries must have a strong planning, management, and marketing base. Additionally, librarians and information professionals must understand the fundamentals of these processes as they play a deciding role in helping their organizations achieve them. Thanks to my coursework at the MLIS program and some professional experiences, I can now articulate and apply the fundamental principles of planning, management and marketing/advocacy. As evidence I am presenting here three class projects that I feel represent well my understanding of this competency.
I believe the most important tool library management has in helping them follow a roadmap to success is the strategic plan. Simply put a strategic plan determines where an organization is going in the near future, how it is going to get there, and how it will know if it got there or not. Planning is important because it focuses an organization's energy into working toward the same future goals while allowing the organization to assess and adjust its direction in response to a changing environment. I got a taste of the planning process complexities in my LIBR 204 course (Information Organizations & Management) when I wrote a strategic plan for a fictitious university library that would serve as its operational guide for the next five years. I started by establishing a strategic focus composed of a mission and vision statements supported by the organization's values. This focus helped me shape the rest of the plan, including the goals and objectives, strategic initiatives, environmental analysis (i.e. SWOT, products and services, users, and competition), organizational resources (i.e. staff competencies, funding and resources, and budgeting), and critical success factors (i.e. action plan focus, implementation, marketing plan, measuring and reporting effectiveness of the plan, and management of goals and objectives). While developing the strategic plan I decided to give the library an extra planning tool and included an action plan. I felt this would give the library's management a yearly blueprint of objectives to be achieved by year's end. If followed at the conclusion of the five year period, the library would have accomplished all its goals, objectives, and key initiatives.
Creating this document allowed me to experience first hand the degree of involvement, length of time, and extraordinary effort that go into planning, managing, and carrying a library forward. I learned that without a strategic plan a library would be hard pressed to succeed; its management would not have a guide of key points to follow, monitor, and strive toward, its staff would not know how to properly serve its patrons, and its service quality would ultimately be degraded.
The successful implementation of planning is a feat achieved by management. In my opinion management is the key to getting anything done efficiently by making the best use of resources and working through the steps put forth by planning while maximizing the organization's profit. Through my coursework, but especially in LIBR 204 (Information Organizations & Management), I learned about the basic concepts and challenges of library management. For instance, the manager of a library is responsible for managing the staff and its development, maintaining a balanced budget, overseeing daily operations and the proper functioning of the facilities, anticipating and resolving conflicts, nurturing relationships with stakeholders, trustees, and the library board, planning and executing fundraising and marketing efforts, and many other functions. A quote from Managing for Results (1999, Complete Description Section, para. 1) sums it all up for me "(s)uccessfully managing a library means doing all the right things all the time."
I had the opportunity to work on one aspect of library management when I had to create a balanced budget for an institution as part of the strategic plan assignment (p. 17). As a non-profit organization, the university library did not make a profit from its services. However, during its normal course of business the library received funding from the university, State and donors, and income from fines and fees. As well, the library had an extensive list of expenses that I had to account for and justify against the income received. Some of those expenses were related to acquisitions, advertising and marketing, collection conservation, services, staffing, technology maintenance and purchasing, training, and facilities utilities. This assignment also provided a strong basis for me to perform the accounting duties in my current job where I have to constantly balance expenses, both planned and unforeseen, against the company's budget. This has proven to be a veritable exercise in juggling priorities, account balances, income, and financial liabilities. Alas, this type of small business accounting is in a much smaller scale than a public library's but it involves the same financial planning and execution principles learned during the assignment.
For a different assignment, I had the chance to reflect on yet another aspect of library management during a group management case study for the same course. In this assignment our group was presented with a hypothetical management issue arising as result of a public library's decision to carry Playboy magazine. We presented a fictional conflict between a library customer, outraged by the presence of Playboy on the library's shelves, the untrained employee who first takes her complaint, and the library's manager. Through the process our group realized that the manager had to carefully weigh the issue of censorhip against those of public opinion, press relations, and trying to maintain fruitful interactions with the board of directors. We finally suggested a comprehensive solution, taking into consideration library policy development, the development of customer service procedures, marketing library policy, and political issues. My role in this assignment was to find out alternative solutions that would not imply censoring library materials (pages 9 - 15). I appreciated this exercise because it exposed me to a situation that is bound to happen in the life of every librarian or information professional. I realized how difficult it was trying to reconcile intellectual freedom with managing the expectations of the constituency, who are ultimately the ones who support the library's funding through the voting process and support organizations.
Planning and management are just but one part of the equation. A library or information organization must also have a clear marketing strategy. Marketing is the process by which a product or service that is targeted toward potential customers, raises or meets a need, and ultimately ends up in their hands. The best library services will languish unused if the library does not market their existence to the constituency. The number of ways in which an organization can reach its audience are only limited by the imagination. Some creative ways to reach out are brochures, surveys, announcements in the library's website or in the media, canvassing, and many more. For the same course I created a brochure that summarized the strategic plan for public consumption. In as little as two pages library users and community members at large learned about the institution's strategic initiatives and future plans as framed within the context of the library's vision, mission, values, and goals. In the brochure I also included the names and titles of the people involved in carrying the strategic plan's vision to fruition as I felt it would market the library staff and board as being approachable to questions or concerns.
I learned quite a bit of marketing and design techniques during this assignment. The initial challenge was deciding what type pf marketing material to create. I decided on a brochure as I believe it is a portable and concise marketing tool. Now the creative part began. The more I wanted to start typing the more I kept realizing that it would be better if I had a plan of sorts. So I started by determining the purpose of the brochure, the message that I wanted to convey, and who the target audience was. Next I designed the layout. The brochure contained a lot of information so it was important for me to include graphics that would make it pleasing to the eye without detracting from the content. Remembering that first impressions are lasting I designed the cover last as I wanted to make it attractive enough for people to be drawn to it and be motivated to read through the document.
The lessons learned here helped me design one page brochures later on during a brief stint in the commercial real estate business. The design style was completely different as it called for impacting fonts and colors as well as more pictures than text but the essence was the same: reach as many targeted potential customers as possible. Time and again I got first hand feedback on the impact of this marketing tool as I fielded the many phone calls generated by strategically disseminating the brochures in local markets and shops. In this assignment I learned how important it is for libraries to market themselves. In this day and age of healthy business competition, libraries must follow every effort to advertise their services and set themselves apart from the rest.
Intimately related to the marketing aspect of a library is advocacy. The population of the United States continues to grow, indicating a greater need for information, but in many instances the financial support from the government continues to dwindle. In addition, many people might not realize the information resources available to them through their local libraries, further affecting their support of libraries and their funding. It is important that librarians act as library advocates by raising awareness of our communities' information needs, how we meet them, and what we need in terms of their support. ALA (ALA, 2008, What is Library Advocacy? Section, para. 1) defines advocacy as "turning passive support into educated action by stakeholders." I interpret this to mean anything that can be done to voice support of libraries and to encourage others to do the same. My experience has taught me that library advocacy does not necessarily need to involve overly complex steps. Some of the ways in which I, as a library stakeholder, can help raise awareness about library needs are: making donations and asking my friends and family members to do the same, writing to my elected officials about the library's need for funding, submitting opinion pieces to the local media on the role of libraries in the betterment of the community, being aware and spreading the word about funding issues and budget cuts, voting in favor of the development and funding of State's libraries, and being a member of library organizations such as ALA to be kept up to date on current issues. Libraries can also become their own advocates by educating their patrons about the status of library funding or other needs (this can be achieved through strategic marketing materials, chats with patrons, effective presentations, community discussions, etc.), executing targeted fundraisers, organizing events such as rallies or pamphlet passing at key gathering places in the community, attending and participating in local city meetings in which library funding and budget cuts are discussed, and many others. As a future information professional I am profoundly aware of the issues that libraries face in the current political and economic climate. As a stakeholder I am proud to already be taking firm steps to support libraries, their development, and funding. A great tool that I reference to often is ALA's Issues & Advocacy Toolkit which offers several resources, ideas, links, and peer-reviewed articles on the subject.
Looking back on my professional experience and school work as it relates to planning, managing, and marketing/advocacy, it is clear to me that without implementing these principles an organization is most likely destined for failure. There are so many different aspects to running a library successfully that without an adequate amount of planning to guide the organization toward achieving its mission while at the same time preparing itself to weather contingencies, there is no telling what can happen when issues do arise. Further, the intimate bond between library and its constituency is reached mostly through marketing and advocacy. I see these tools as a trifecta for a library's success and aim to utilize my newfound knowledge about them in my future as a librarian or information professional.
References
American Library Association. (2008). Issues & advocacy. Retrieved September 8, 2008, from http://www.ala.org/ala/issues/gettingstarted.cfm
Nelson, S, Altman, E., & Mayo, D. (1999). Managing for results. Retrieved September 8, 2008, from the ALA Store Web Site:
http://www.alastore.ala.org/SiteSolution.taf?_sn=catalog2&_pn=product_detail&_
op=635#more
Evidentiary
LIBR 204 - Information Organizations & Management - Strategic Plan
LIBR 204 - Information Organizations & Management - Management Case Study
LIBR 204 - Information Organizations & Management - Strategic Plan Brochure