Strategic Planning for Academic Libraries: A Step-by-Step Guide

No doubt about it: strategic planning is a serious commitment. But when carried out skillfully, thoughtfully, and with sensitivity to the impacts on all those involved, it's an undertaking that can pay large dividends for the library and its users. A strong strategic plan gives shape and clarity to the library's intentions and, when carefully written, can make a powerful case for the library's indispensability to its sponsoring institution. Providing library deans, directors, and university librarians with up-to-date guidance, this book outlines a step-by-step method that helps readers prepare for a successful strategic planning process, create and implement a strategic plan, and assess the effectiveness of both the process and the resulting plan; discusses the differences between scenario planning and strategic planning, with pointers on determining which would be best in a given organization; offers expert advice for communicating a strategic plan clearly and compellingly to the library’s many stakeholders at every stage of the process; shares ways to bring library staff as well as users into the planning process; teaches how to use surveys and focus groups to inform strategic planning, complete with sample survey questions and a consent cover letter; addresses whether and how to hire consultants; concludes with a summary of the essential elements of a successful planning process, ideal for quick reference; and includes an appendix with numerous useful templates, from an Executive Council Strategic Planning Retreat Agenda to a Final Report. Written by a team of authors with decades of library administration experience between them, this powerful resource enables academic libraries to produce plans that will offer directional guidance to employees while also demonstrating the library's power to meet institutional goals.