Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
by Edward J. Elsner
Edward Elsner Library Consulting
Planning
Community Profile
Surveys
Statistics
Sample Statistics
National Averages
Staffing Allocation
Programming Desires
Collection Allocation
Evaluation
Notes
References
Hey, glad to see you have a general understanding of the laws affecting your
small public library. Now we're going to look at planning because without
knowing where the library is going and what your mission and goals are, there
is no way you can possibly be a successful small public library. Serving the
public is great, but lots of places serve the public: how does your library serve
the public and in what ways; are you a community center; do you supply
reading material, research material, or education? There are many different
things the library can do; planning allows the library to look at the community's
needs and how the resources of the library can best be used to meet those
needs. If you are unsure of how to proceed, simply follow the practical steps
listed in this chapter. After the practical discussion are sections discussing
community assessments, surveys, and statistics -- three important planning
tools -- followed by brief allocation and evaluation discussions. Finally, the
basic steps for planning a program with a calendar of yearly events for public
library programs are listed.
• There are more public libraries in the United States than there are
McDonald's!
• Three times as many Americans visit libraries as attend movie theaters
each year!1
• Public libraries entertain and educate many more people with their
programming each year than attend top tier college football games.2
• Each resident in the United States checks out an average of 6.5 items
while only spending about $27 a year in taxes for their public library,
equivalent to the cost of one new best seller.3
• Nationally, public libraries receive less than 1% of all tax dollars, but are
used by more than 50% of all adults.4
Planning
What does the community, and the individual patron, pay the library for? What
is the library's mission? Work with these two questions to provide the
community the services they need. Always look at your mission and the needs
of the community before deciding to fund, or to continue funding, any service
or program of the library. Ask yourself: is this in line with our mission; does it
advance our goals and objectives? If either answer is ever "no," then work to
slowly phase out that aspect of your service. Integrate planning, budgeting,
and evaluation so all activities are heading towards the library's mission and
goals.
The budget is your library's plan expressed in financial terms so people looking
at your budget can determine what is truly important to your library. Think
several years at a time, using a spreadsheet to forecast revenues and
expenditures and creating both pessimistic and optimistic forecasts as well as
those containing the best possible educated guesses. Identify all costs
associated with providing a service, even the cost of what the library or others
freely provide. Building, equipment, staff, and administrative costs should be
calculated by what percentage of use a program or service takes. Multiply the
total cost by the service's percentage to determine its share of the overhead. If
more funds are needed, ask for them! Stand up for all of the people who use
your library and demand they receive services they are entitled to. Publicize
all the library does, how little it costs in comparison to other government
services, and how many people take advantage of your services. People use
their libraries more than any other government service! Convince the
politicians and funders of the amazing value you offer. "Library support has
ranged from one to two percent of U.S. municipal budgets for a century, rarely
reaching the full two percent. For that comparative pittance, libraries know
they serve about 25 percent of the population on a regular basis, and a much
larger percentage less frequently. Very few agencies, public or private, can
claim to provide that much service. We don't know of any that do it on a
shoestring and still manage to deliver satisfaction at the rate of 95 percent."5
Library patrons are much more likely to vote than non-patrons; never let the
politicians forget. Between the surprising value offered and the general love of
the people for public libraries, you should never have to face a funding crisis.
Be a leader and an entrepreneur, marketing the amazing library services you
have and looking for opportunities to offer new services within your mission.
Listen to the staff and your patrons regarding what they perceive as the needs
and wants of the community since they are probably right. Be willing to try
new things as you never know when you might succeed. The future is always
moving so be prepared. The Boy Scouts were on to something.
"Yet planning requires more than discovering where you want to end up; it
involves a logical process of anticipation and the deliberate assessment of both
opportunities and potential obstacles. Effective planning requires knowledge
and information (about both the status quo and projected possibilities) upon
which to base the dreams of what the future might be like. Organizational
planning has to be a shared activity with input from everyone directly involved
and also those potentially affected by proposed changes."6
A Practical Approach to Planning
All workforms and instructions from The New Planning for Results are available
online from eLearn Libraries at
http://www.elearnlibraries.com/workforms/new_planning_for_results.html.
Step One: Learn / Review the Basics of Planning. Familiarize yourself with
techniques for exploring possibilities, such as discussions and brainstorming,
and reaching agreement in groups, such as consensus building and forced
choice. Know how to communicate clearly in a variety of situations and how to
present the data you will collect. See the Communication section in Chapter 6,
Management, for more on communication. All this can be accomplished by
reading the tool kit section of The New Planning for Results (pp. 221-278).7
Step Two: Create a Community Profile and Develop Surveys. From existing
data sources, compile a general profile of your community. Work up surveys for
gathering data on both the community's needs for a library and its perceptions
of the library. Example surveys are included so you can simply fill in the blanks,
photocopy, and go or you can choose the questions you like and create your
own survey. Have professors and students in library science or statistics help
you gather and distill the data.
Step Four: Select a Community Planning Committee. While steps two and
three are in progress, start selecting a community-based planning committee,
giving your governing body say over the final committee. Include a staff
member, a board member, and a representative from any active Friends of the
Library organization. Look for representation from each of your major user
groups and from active organizations in your community -- ask school, business,
professional, and government leaders. Make sure the final committee
represents a cross section of the ages, educational background, and ethnicity
found in your community. Each committee member can represent several
groups, so you do not need a huge committee, 13 members may work fine. For
more information, see "Design the Planning Process" in The New Planning for
Results (pp. 23-31).
Step Six: Determine which Needs the Library will Meet. The planning
committee, looking at both existing and possible resources, decides which of
the needs the library is best positioned to meet. Keep in mind that some needs
are being met by other organizations in the community to avoid duplication and
provide ideas for partnerships.
Step Seven: Develop the Library Mission Statement. The planning committee
develops a mission statement for your library specifying which community
needs you will attempt to meet. This should be a positive statement, i.e. the
_____________ Library is a community center and a cultural center for the
area. Take this mission to the board for discussion and approval at their next
meeting.
Step Eight: Write Goals and Objectives. The planning committee writes goals
to meet your new mission and determines how you will measure progress
toward these goals. Write objectives that concretely state both the measure
and what change the library wants to see in it using terms such as "increase" or
"at least" along with a percentage. Some examples are to increase summer
reading participation by 13% or to have at least 20% of older citizens attend a
program. More possible measures are listed with each service response in The
New Planning for Results (pp. iv, 151-220). Include a deadline within the next
year or two for each objective when success or failure will be determined.
Discuss the goals and objectives with the staff and then the board as both
groups need to accept and support them before you can move forward.
Step Nine: Identify then Select Activities to Meet each Objective. Create a
list of possible activities for each objective. Go through this list three times
looking at (1) whether the activity increases your chance of meeting the
objective, (2) what resources are required, and (3) the interest and excitement
it will generate. Eliminate activities unlikely to help you meet your objective
by its deadline then rank the remaining activities by resource requirements and
fun factor. Select activities needing the fewest resources while generating the
most fun. Don't forget to talk with the staff! For more information, see
"Identify Preliminary Activities" in The New Planning for Results (pp. 97-102).
Step Ten: Share the Results! Write out the final activities, objectives, goals,
and mission statement to share with the board, staff, and planning committee.
Write up a summary, including your mission and goals, to share with patrons
and the whole community.
Step Eleven: Implement the New Plan. Follow up with resource allocation,
integration, and implementation of your library's new plan, budgeting for each
activity. Look at the service responses in The New Planning for Results (pp. iv,
151-220) for help with resource allocation. Each resource -- staff, collection,
facility, and technology -- has a certain capacity, utilization, access, and
condition. You can also look at "Determine Resource Requirements" (pp. 104-
115), "Allocate or Reallocate Resources" (pp. 132-141), and "Monitor
Implementation" (pp. 141-144).
Community Profile
Data to Gather:
Age distribution
• 0-5 years
• 6-17 years
• 18-29 years
• 30-44 years
• 45-64 years
• 65+
Educational attainment
• No diploma
• H.S. grad or GED
• Some college
• Associate degree
• Bachelor degree
• Higher degree
Surveys
Four simple questions to guide your efforts are to ask your patrons:
Surveys of forced choice questions are the best, i.e. listing the level of services
possible and how much a person would have to pay for each, then asking
respondents to choose what they would be willing to pay for. See the sample
surveys included here for examples of forced choice questions where
respondents or interviewers would circle a provided answer. The sample
surveys also have open-ended questions asking respondents to list their favorite
areas or write in what they perceive as problems. Open-ended questions allow
data you could not foresee during survey creation to be gathered.
Compile statistics at least quarterly to share with the board. Include new users
and what part of your service area they are coming from, computer usage,
visits to the library, items and catalog records added, program attendance, and
circulation. If possible, compare the current statistics with the same quarter
from a year ago and yearly graph the trends for the past two to three years.
This is a simple way for the board and staff to keep up with what the library is
doing and watch for growing trends.
Percentages are great measures since they can be compared across different
organizations easily. Any percentage measure means taking the item of
interest, dividing it by the total of that area, and then multiplying by 100. If
the library above had 5,000 people with library cards, then the percentage of
the population that were patrons would be 55.6% = 5,000 / 9,000 * 100. When
doing budget preparations, prepare reports or graphs showing how the budget
is distributed between staff, materials, technology, and facilities; a pie chart
would be excellent. Any per capita measure simply involves taking the original
measure and dividing it by the total population of your service area, i.e. a
library receiving $250,000 a year in revenues for a service area of 9,000 people
would have a per capita, or per person, income of $27.78. Multiplying a per
capita calculation by 1,000 then gives you the same measure per 1,000
population. When I refer to uses, I add up the yearly circulation, reference
transactions, computer usage, and program attendance.
Sample Statistics
Compare usage vs. maximum possible usage, i.e. all computers used every hour
the library is open, every item always checked out, or every staff member
answering questions every 15 minutes. Any collection or area of the library
approaching maximum usage should be expanded or updated. All statistics can
be compared to national and local averages available from the National Center
for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/publicpeer/.
National averages, fiscal year 2002, for the 6,809 libraries serving populations
from 0 to 20,000 people (and in parenthesis for the 8,106 libraries serving 0 to
50,000) are:
Once you select the data, include the entire set for each element -- do not
report only the good responses or only the circulation increases; look at the
whole. Be able to explain why you chose the data elements used and where the
information came from if your report is ever questioned. Double check all the
numbers and calculations you use to avoid including any inaccuracies or typos;
one small mistake can sink your entire presentation. When organizing your data
you can put them in their:
• chronological order showing trends over time,
• priority order starting with the most important data and then backing it
up with related data, or
• narrative order arranging the data to tell an overall story starting with
what your audience already knows and leading them to your conclusion.
Use graphic representations of your data whenever practical, making sure your
document showing this data is visually appealing, attractive, easy to read, and
clearly shows the information. The best layout is a balance between empty
space, text, and graphics that guides the reader's eyes to your information --
simple is always better than crowded. Put together a listing of some basic
statistics to circulate in the community.
Staffing Allocation
Increase the value of your services: offer home computer help, introduce
people to the Internet and email, help them set up their PC system, take credit
cards both to pay for fees and fines and for donations, have drive up drop off
and pick up for materials, allow remote access to holdings, reserves, ILL
requests, renewals, and more, rent the latest bestsellers or videos, find rare or
out of print items for a fee, or download and compile audio CD's. Many of the
ever-expanding palette of services and programs available to the small public
library can be set up to pay for themselves with fees.
There is a real desire today to interact with other people and talk about what
is going on in the world as we become more and more isolated. Everything is
now available delivered into our homes and experienced singularly so cultural
programming is very important. Simply having a weekly time to gather for
coffee and cookies at the library might be a wonderful service. There is also a
greater demand than ever for children's programs, although you sometimes
have to take them on the road to day cares. Other important programming can
include tutoring, a homework center, or after school programs. Put up a
bulletin board for community events. Provide connection and support in your
community.
While interacting is important and valuable, people still come to the library for
a quiet place to sit and read or study too. Suggest these people try to use the
library while the children are attending school and, if possible, create quiet
spaces where the rest of the library can be shut out. Plan the library hours and
location to be most convenient for the majority. Due to physical, medical, or
other reasons, people exist in every community who cannot get to your library
so arrange for volunteers or other means to get the materials to these people.
Always include a postage paid return envelope if offering books by mail.
Programming Desires
Kids want fun, prizes, recognition, and something to take home. Generally boys
want strength, power, good vs. evil, control, and silliness and girls want beauty,
a glamorous lifestyle, strength, control, and silliness. Many of these wants
overlap -- you can target boys and girls with the same program. You make deep
connections with the kids by fulfilling their wants starting with the program
theme which needs to be in active words implying power, strength, and
control. Their parents usually want reading, learning, activities, a place to
socialize, to keep their kids busy, a safe place, and participation with their
children. Senior citizens want a place to share and discuss, to create
community, to share their love of reading, and to create memories. Visitors
want rainy day activities, interaction with other children, to make friends, a
connection to their vacation community, and to support programs through
donations.
The cause of most problem children is the parents, or lack thereof. Even if a
child has parents, if their parents are not involved in the kid's lives and
providing them with learning opportunities, it makes little difference. A
support group for parents is needed at every level in the community. Work on
creating many networks for sharing, learning, and caring. Look at troubled kids
as abandoned and needy, not dangerous. Every person, no matter what they
have done, has worth and should have hope for the future. Pull out their
strengths and build on them and let them earn privileges by helping others.
Collection Allocation
All small public libraries need to plan for providing best sellers, children's
books, basic information, popular magazines, and local and regional
newspapers. You may be able to share foreign language and ethnic collections
with a larger group, either a regional or statewide network of libraries.
Purchase large print, audio books, and adaptive technology since people live
longer and need help accessing the information and stories available. We are
also an increasingly busy society and audio books allow us to do other things
while experiencing these stories. Be very aware of emerging disabilities as your
patrons age; hearing and vision loss are common with aging, but the patron will
be uncomfortable with the loss and with adaptive technology. Help them
without embarrassing them -- let them find and use the technology on their
own through signs and simple instructions, i.e. a bin of magnifiers near the
card catalog. Work with senior apartments, homes, and groups to get their
residents signed up for Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
services. LBPH will mail books on tape and/or large print materials directly to
anyone who qualifies. Your library can keep a rotating collection of large print
and audio books in central locations at nursing homes and senior apartments
too. Other great places to have small rotating collections are subsidized meal
sites, head start, daycare, clothing or food assistance sites, etc. See if your
Friends group or the location will pay for a bookcase. Library programming can
also take place at these rotating collection sites. Art and music are especially
appropriate. Be sure to plug the library and its full range of services at each
program. Once the basics are covered, consider branching out to videos, music,
interactive games, puppets, and realia.
Do not try to do the impossible. Handle the remainder of your interactions with
classes, tutors, making appointments, charging fees for the service, or
referrals.
Evaluation
A plan is required to describe your programs and services and how they are
evaluated. "The library should be constantly evaluating itself, its services, the
needs of the community, and the environment in which it operates. Feedback
from the community, in the form of patron surveys, presentations at service
clubs, projects of library Friends groups, and other public contacts provide
valuable information about current service programs and other services which
the library might provide. It is equally important to know about other library
activities within the community and region and the opportunities they offer to
provide better service, new programs, or reduce costs."14 Look at other sources
of programs and materials available to your community and find out what is
available through nearby library systems and state networks. Measure your
activities, programs, and services. Compare what you do with model public
libraries, small public libraries in your region, and book and video stores. This
benchmarking gives you a general idea of where your library stands and where
you can make changes. Small libraries can do a better job than big libraries
because they are closer to the patron and have daily interactions with them;
this constant contact and feedback allows your plans and educated guesses to
be more accurate.
Programs and services all need measurable outcome objectives, i.e. what will
be different in the community or with the patron as a result? Feel free to
project the ripple effect forward through all of the people influenced by the
patron who partook of the actual program. Outcome measures are always in
terms of the patron, individually or as groups, and come from several different
areas: physical costs, psychological costs, financial costs, time, value, quality,
and ease of delivery. Some common outcomes are increased library visibility,
families now using the library, enhanced job preparedness, using technology to
access information, increases in skills, and changes in behaviors. Outcome data
can be collected by surveys, evaluations, testing before and after, focus
groups, interviews, and observations. Use the Outcome Evaluation Toolkit
available at Information Behavior in Everyday Context (IBEC). Go to
http://ibec.ischool.washington.edu/ and then click on Tools and Resources to
find the Outcome Toolkit. It has a wonderful section, Step 2 Topic b, on
creating open-ended questions libraries can use to determine outcomes.
References:
• Durance, Joan C. and Karen E. Fisher. How Libraries and Librarians Help:
A Guide to Identifying User-Centered Outcomes. Chicago: American
Library Association, 2005.
• Fox, Linda. The Volunteer Library: A Handbook. Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 1999.
• Hage, Christine Lind. The Public Library Start-Up Guide. Chicago:
American Library Association, 2004.
• Nelson, Sandra. The New Planning for Results. Chicago: American Library
Association, 2001. All workforms and instructions for this title are
available online from eLearn Libraries at
http://www.elearnlibraries.com/workforms/new_planning_for_results.h
tml.