Libraries Transforming Communities

Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC from here on out) is an American Library Association initiative.  It "seeks to strengthen library's role as core community leaders and change agents."

I agree with the spirit and the values of LTC and I would enthusiastically implement it if I was running a public library.  BUT, my role is to support service planning in particular, and I don't think LTC helps you write a library plan.  In particular, it doesn't serve as a good needs assessment tool to guide library service planning.  It isn't intended to.

To do needs assessment in support of library planning, you need to talk to the community to find out what's going on, then select library services that respond to local needs.  For example, you talk and you find out there is a graffiti epidemic and little hoodlums are terrorizing the streets because there is nothing for kids to do.  So the library starts offering youth programs and having teen only Friday nights with movies and gaming and popcorn and this contributes to a successful solution and the library gets a thank you letter from local police.  (True Alberta story, BTW.)  Identification of local need + a library service that responds = a good plan and good outcomes.

LTC is kinda like that.  In a way, its even more community focused than Strategic Planning for Results, which is ALA's older community needs assessment / library planning model.  But that is the "problem".  LTC is totally community focused.  It's all about what happens in the community.  The library plays a role in that, helps the thing to happen, but what happens is not a library thing.

For example, one anecdote from an ALA webinar I watched mentioned the case of a library which used needs assessment to uncover a burning community desire to change a traffic light in town.  The library helped citizens to organize and lobby and get the light changed.  That's great, and the library played a useful, appropriate role in the process.  But the process did not uncover anything about what the library should be doing.  The library's current and future role was never planned or examined.

Again, I am not criticizing LTC.  I'm just saying that LTC doesn't help a library plan its future.  

A folksy, Will Rogers style statement on roles and responsibilities

"We all play different roles in our lives.  We are parents, children, homeschoolers, basketball players, library trustees, mayors, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers ...  And some of these roles we play, these hats we wear, are contradictory.  Sometimes different hats pull you in different directions.  

Try to remember what role you are playing at any given time.  If you are a library trustee and also a town councillor, for example, the minute a library board meeting begins, you act as a trustee and not as a councillor.  That's the hat you have on at that time.

When town council meets, that's when you are a councillor first.

 And remember,"

[says Will as he hooks a cuspidor with his foot and pulls it close, spits, winks, reaches into the pickle barrel for a treat, and begins tuning his banjo]

"You'll look silly if you try to wear more than one hat at a time!"

In Praise of Wikipedia

I don't know what the consensus is today, but last time I checked, lots of people were dubious about Wikipedia.  Lots of smart people said that mob-written content couldn't be trusted.  And it's true, I have found mistakes, heard about agenda-driven edits, and recognize the weaknesses of the wiki model.

But you know what Wikipedia is the best at?  Telling you if some vague concept you've heard about is really a "thing".

Let's take, for example, "workflow analysis".  I ran into this term a few years ago, and I remember wondering whether it was a recognized technique or just words that someone put together, equivalent to, say, "playing banjo in the dark."  So I looked it up in Google and saw there was a Wikipedia entry for it.  Then I knew it was a field of human endeavor that was recognized by some set of people to be "A Thing".  

The circle of life, management style

I have been using an image in some of my board training that looks like this:

I tell boards that they should be most active in the planning and evaluation stages, leaving implementation, operations and measurement to library staff.  Governance in action!  Where a good board should be!

I also use this image as the leadup to a joke.  If you don't want to put in the work that this "virtuous cycle of management" involves, I say, there is an alternative....

And then comes the punchline:

Heh ha har de har ha

I saw another version of  this Management Circle of Life or whatever-you-want-to-call-it and I began to wonder, where did it come from?  A bit of Googling revealed it is known as the Deming Cycle, or the Shewhart Cycle, or the PDCA Cycle.  It is said to be originated by Walter Shewhart and thereafter developed by W. Arthur Deming.  

The common-sense basis of this management cycle goes back to Moses but its modern origin is with Walter Shewhart.  Shewhart developed the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle in the 1920s as part of his management theories that also included data-driven process control.  His student Deming popularized and fine tuned the cycle, renaming it Plan-Do-Study-Act to emphasize the analysis that is part of evaluation.

My version of the cycle splits their "check" (or "study") step into two steps ("measure" and "evaluate") and eliminates their "act" step.  

I actually think my version is better, at least for libraries:

• I see measurement and evaluation as being quite separate, with staff being responsible for measurement (counting program attendance, circulation etc.) and boards responsible (partially at least) for evaluation. 
• I don't think you should "act" immediately after checking/studying/evaluating; you need to decide how to act first!  In other words, planning must happen in the middle there.

Strategic Planning for Results

The Old Testament of library planning

Do you want to write a strategic plan or plan of service for your public library?  You can't go wrong starting with Sandra Nelson's book Strategic Planning for Results (shortened to SP4R by me and absolutely no one else on the planet.)

We use this as our default planning methodology in Alberta public libraries for the following reasons:

• It is written by librarians for libraries and it fits the public library situation.
• It emphasizes services:  
• There are lots of important things a library can include in a strategic plan (governance, succession, infrastructure, etc. etc.) but nothing is more important than service choices.  It isn't obvious what libraries do anymore (if it ever was).  Will your library be a wonderland for young children?  A drop-in center for at-risk populations?  A creation space for artists and techies?  A research facility?  All of these and many more are options.  But unfortunately, you can't do everything!
• SP4R is all about choosing services.  In fact it includes a pretty good description of all the services that a public library is likely to offer (more on that later.)
• It focuses on the community:
• So if the library has to choose what services to offer, how should it decide?  It should consult with the community.  Services must respond to community need.  That research library that Joe Librarian desperately wants to run might not be what Four Corners, Alberta really needs.
• SP4R lets the community decide what service the library will offer.  More precisely, the community identifies local needs and library services that meet those local needs are selected.
• It includes a good process:
• It ain't easy talking to the public.  There are a lot of them, for one thing.  How do you survey the community and allow them to guide the library's plans?
• SP4R includes robust and simple techniques for consulting the community.  It is based on public meetings and it includes lots of directions for how to facilitate those meetings and use the results.
• SP4R also instructs you how to take the meeting results and use them to write a plan including goals and objectives.