Definition of Competency or Understanding of Competency
Planning in a library setting for me means first strategic planning, and then the project/program planning and management that follow in its wake. The director of the XX library system (XXXX) Laura Dershowitz, identifies the steps in the strategic planning process, while emphasizing that the foundation for any strategic plan are an organization’s mission, vision, and values. An example of a comprehensive strategic plan can be seen in XXXX’s Strategic Framework, which includes details about key projects. The need for management at all levels emerges out of planning. A good definition of management is “using organizational resources to achieve objectives through planning, organizing, staffing (human resources), leading, and controlling,” where controlling means monitoring and assessing (Moran, 2018, pp 67-68). Moran identifies the hard and soft skills that managers need: political skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, people skills, and financial skills (2018, p. 72).
Jacoby and Kern list and elucidate the roles and responsibilities for a head reference manager (2016, pp 179-206) in a way that mirrors and expands on both Dershowitz and Moran. In a historical overview, Tyckoson describes managing reference services to be like “herding cats” (2012, p 599), and while he does not bring forth any management theory for the reference service profession in his literature review, he does offer useful management guidelines, including using a service model like RUSA’s. Similarly, Mongelli provides a “therapeutic service model” for the management of prison libraries, but his “management theory” comes in the form of a glossary of terms (Mongelli, 2017). Four years after Tyckoson’s overview, the president of RUSA noted that reference service providers “are increasingly called on to justify our value through statistics, surveys, and other kinds of data” (Houston, 2016). Gorman identifies this call to transform how reference services are managed as “corresponding more nearly to business practices” and rejects this call for having “no end-state to which they aspire” (2012, pp 115-116). Koizumi and Widdersheim compare a public library management model with a “shared value” business model and conclude that it is actually business practices that might need to take a lesson from public library management models (2016, pp 404-416). The latter researchers’ analyses read like Gorman when they argue that even though a business management model compares in some ways with public library management models, it “misses that how the value is created is more important than what the value is.” (Koizumi & Widdersheim, 2012, p 414). In 1876 Samuel Green described marketing as one of the four service roles for reference librarians, and Tyckoson points out that by this, Green meant that one could promote the library by helping people via the other three roles— instruction, question answering, and reader’s advisories (2008, pp 130-133).
Leonard and Tedford elaborate on how librarians can market their services and thus promote the library (2016, pp 281-304). Dempsey, in a historical overview of marketing in U.S. libraries, considers John Cotton Dana (1856-1929) to be the original marketing pioneer (2019, p 26) and models her own “true marketing, a deliberate process of finding out what people want, making it available, and then strategically promoting it” after Dana, while distancing her model from perceived critics (p 27). Both Leonard and Tedford, and Dempsey’s marketing models place themselves within a strategic framework that use tools like SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis (Dempsey, 2019; Leonard and Tedford, 2016). Even prison libraries consider marketing as an important aspect of an overall strategic plan (Lehmann & Locke, 2005, p 15). Library marketing has become entwined with communication and outreach efforts (Alman, 2018, pp 331-342), design and design thinking (Clarke, 2018, pp 278-287; Ideo, 2014a; Ideo, 2014b), and branding and merchandising (Dempsey, 2019, pp 37-38). Advocacy can be defined as a “planned, deliberate, sustained effort to develop understanding and support incrementally over time” (Haycock, 2011). Advocacy can be conceived as encompassing ideas like public relations, promotion, marketing, networking, persuasion, and lobbying within an advocacy plan that eventually has an outside influence on defining an audience, messaging, demonstrating value, and building relationships with influential partners (Stenstrom, 2018, pp 344-351).
Strategic planning for me is the overarching manner, that is to say the process by which an information organization comes to understand how it arrives at and comes to identify with a particular mission, vision, and set of values. From this place of understanding, information professionals have a foundation upon which to properly assess the output of the organization, its value in terms of materials, services, programs, projects and the like. I see management as the professional structure that enables informational professionals to come together to not only create, manage, and sustain a strategic plan, but also the operating of that plan day-by-day, month-by-month, year-after-year. Marketing and advocacy can be done at any level— from within a 5-year plan, or in relation to a particular project or program. The vast bulk of the marketing done by librarians, however, will probably be of the kind illustrated by Samuel Green, that is in myriad daily, face-to-face interactions with patrons in which they are literally the public face of the institution, and will by design reflect its values and embody its soul and spirit.
Preparation to Understand Competency D: Coursework and Work Experience
As an employee of the XX library system for over ten years I have become familiar with the ebb and flow of strategic plans and have experienced at two 5-year cycles through this process. As one of the largest circulating library systems in the county XXXX does an admirable job of coordinating what is an enormous, multi-year project that covers every department and staffing level for 50 library branches, and includes an administrative building, a materials processing center, and a juvenile detention facility. My direct experience with the process has largely been through large group brainstorming sessions with others throughout the system and filling out surveys and polls. Having worked at all 50 branches, and having spent time in the administration building, and because XXXX is very transparent about their organizational structure, I am fairly cognizant of the various management levels within the system and how these management levels intersect and connect with each other. My many years working in reference services, performing reference interviews to determine patron’s user needs, is a skill that also correlates to what a marketer hopes to achieve by surveying customers. XXXX’s marketing and branding is evident every day in the unobtrusive but attractive signage and logos used throughout the system, as well as a flurry of literature and web content, most of it designed to in-house specifications. I have worked on three XXXX committees— a staff recognition committee, an innovation committee, and a committee tasked with choosing XXXX awards (honoring organizational initiatives). All three of these committees were efforts coming out of strategic plan directives, and thus had potential implications for the organization as a whole.
Information Professions (INFO 204) prepared me for understanding how librarians construct broad strategic goals, and how this can affect how librarians go about designing, launching, promoting, and evaluating their programs. During my internship (INFO 294) at XXXX I noted that much of the publicity and promotion of programs was centrally managed, and so, while every librarian pursues a unique programming path, they must remain mindful of XXXX’s 5-year strategic plan. The internship showed me the importance of face-to-face engagement in outreach and advocacy, and marketing in community partnerships. For instance, in outreach attempts to a small, poor, rural, Spanish-speaking community, regular repeat visits by the same children’s librarian was a necessary prerequisite for building trust and bonding. In a Baby Boomer bootcamp I attended, colorful and attractive program literature designed by multiple agencies helped the program organizers to draw a large crowd. My work on over 40 XXXX library programs also exposed me to the many different ways that librarians planned and managed their projects, and how they advocated on behalf of the library system and the community. Over the course of the internship I also collected over nine different examples of planning templates used by librarians in planning their programs.
I chose my first piece of evidence because it connects practical decision-making directly to strategic planning and financial decisions, and because some of the outcomes touch on marketing and advocacy outcomes or solutions. My second evidentiary item was chosen for both my literature review research into how mission statements evolved for U.S research libraries, and for my contributions toward efforts the environmental scan and SWOT analysis, and how the two are a part of the same long-term planning process. My final evidentiary item I chose because I illustrate how the management structure of the library intersects with the management structure of the correctional justice system and touch on how and why advocacy can be such a powerful tool.
Evidence
20% Budget Cut
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a7WMKThQah7AeiNs2Qq73tyopxweT0Ruq5r_dYKp2Os/edit?usp=sharing
For Week 8 of my Information Professions (INFO 204) class, we were tasked with describing what we would do if the information organization we were working for suddenly had to make a 20% budget cut. I solved this conundrum for myself by researching just such an instance. I provide a synopsis of Spadafora’s story of the Newberry, a research library that, during the economic downturn of 2007-2008, suffered a 20% cut to their operating budget (Spadafora, 2012, p 111). I focus on how strategic planning did or did not work, and how management, with the assistance staff leaders in teams, was able to make some wise and crucial decisions during the crisis, and how they were able to rethink and revise the strategic plan so as to a) not lose sight of their mission while b) focus on organizational strengths. I highlight how the reworking of the strategic plan led to management reorganization, a reimagining of the facilities, and a rebranding of programs, which in turn opened up assistance from institutional peers and new revenue streams. (Spadafora, 2012).
My ability to research this paper, and understand the planning and management wisdom contained in this story shows that I understand strategic plans and management structure not simply as forms in need of filling, but rather as living, organic processes that are imagined, created, built, sustained, and refreshed through endless effort and application. I also think it shows that I understand that organizations are not simply kept together by managers, but by wise managers who understand how to lead, which sometimes can even mean marketing the library to staff when they are in danger of losing their jobs. Finally, I demonstrate how the reorganization of an organization’s setting can offer up opportunities to market the organization anew and/or advocate for the organization in novel new ways. Being able to articulate how these moving parts can keep an information organization afloat by mustering all the library’s combined strengths, is itself a strength or skill that I take with me into the work world.
Organizational Analysis Pt 1: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:1dae8882-7945-482a-bd8b-f18388329770
The major group project I worked on for Stenstrom’s Information Professions (INFO 204) class was a two-part organizational analysis of an information organization. My group chose to analyze the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), a research library. In the first part of our analysis we were to conduct a literature review, a SWOT analysis, and draw understanding from HSP’s mission, vision, and values statements. The primary work I did for this project was to conduct a thorough literature review. Because the HSP mission statements were incomplete and/or out-of-date, I focused my review on the historical evolution of mission statements for U.S. research libraries, which had the added benefit of providing relevant information for what a modern mission statement might look like for HSP in a revamped strategic plan.
My research shows how both public and academic visions for research libraries intertwine and overlap over time, how higher education and digitalization were forces that shaped both historical societies and their missions, and how important it is to not make presumptions about user needs. Finally, some of my research led to some truisms about how mission statements ought to be derived from outreach and understanding the library’s community base, how mission statements fail not from language or focus but from undefined goals, and how they generally need to be more visible to the public. I played a direct role in the constructing of HSP’s mission, vision, and values by tying them in with my research; the words were drawn from original statements, but I modified them to be more in-line for a modern, forward-looking institution. My contribution to the SWOT analysis was of a more general nature, focusing mostly on encouraging my co-researchers to fill out more detail in important areas such as sociocultural factors or naming HSP’s major competitors. I also had a hand in all the writing and synthesizing of our SWOT information especially our abstract and conclusion. Understanding how the information drawn into a SWOT analysis provides hard data for planning, and how the mission, vision, and values provides a foundation for that planning, are essential, practical skills I can bring to committee work and other library processes I might engage in.
Prison Library Management
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Ab07d3416-16ab-4534-b7aa-e4444d883e37
In the Seminar on Prison Library Management (INFO 282) I took with Professor Mongelli, I learned within the first week about core management principles; in Week 2 I was tasked with describing the interplay of prison library roles based on those principles and on what administrators expect. For this project I researched how the penitentiary system is organized and managed on a state and national level, with the aim of understanding their impact on correctional librarians. By doing this I was able to bring up library and correctional agencies (ALA and ACA respectively), and the concept of inter-agency service agreements, (the medium through by which library and correctional organizations communicate and partner with one another), and the many factors that influence these organizations and agreements like advocacy groups, or the State and Federal courts (to whom both agencies are beholden).
This confluence of factors enabled me to share the example of a court-ordered reform, in the form of an inter-agency document, which finally laid out standards for adult correctional libraries. I show that in essence, this was an example of how prisoner advocacy groups were able to arrange for a change in how prison libraries were managed, through a mandated, long-term plan that established prison law libraries and trained inmates how to be law clerks. I conclude by describing advocacy of the kind that tips political and legal scales toward a change in the planning or managing of prison libraries, the “court of public opinion,” and give another example when public pressure successful advocated for a reversal of a correctional management directive.
Planning, management, and advocacy within a correctional environment function differently than in say, a public library, but my ability to articulate how these concepts interact with and effect each other, why they might interact in this way, and how they affect library professionals, will be a useful skill within any information organization.
Conclusion
My understanding and skills regarding planning, management, marketing, and advocacy can be applied anywhere within an information organization. Working within one of the largest public libraries in the country, I could not help but absorb the idea that I am the face of the library, that I act as an ambassador or advocate for both the library and librarianship whenever I interact with the public. My many years working in reference services, performing reference interviews to determine patron’s user needs, is a skill that also correlates to what a marketer hopes to achieve by surveying customers. I can articulate how a strategic plan works or does not work and how effective management can keep an organization from imploding when the documents that guide our actions no longer serve the present reality, and I can describe the entire life cycle of what constitutes long-term planning in an information organization, as well as how that planning unfolds in day-to-day work. Finally, having the ability to see the interconnections between planning, management, marketing, and advocacy in my day-to-day work, enables me to function professionally at a high-level, and should serve me in any informational environment.
References
Alman, S.W. (2018). Communication, marketing, and outreach strategies. In Hirsh, S. (Ed.),
Information services today: An introduction. Rowman & Littlefield.
Clarke, R.I. (2018). Innovative library and information services: The design thinking process. In
Hirsh, S. (Ed.). (2018). Information services today: An introduction. Rowman & Littlefield.
Dempsey, K. (2019). An historical overview of marketing in U.S. libraries: From Dana to digital.
Marketing Libraries Journal. 3(1). Retrieved from http://journal.marketinglibraries.org/march2019/MLJv3i1-26-49.pdf
Gorman, M. (2012). The prince’s dream. SCONUL Focus, 54, pp. 11-6. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Gorman5/publication/271605679_The_Prince's_Dream_A_Future_For_Academic_Libraries/links/5a9c01f6a6fdcc3cbacd3d91/The-Princes-Dream-A-Future-For-Academic-Libraries.pdf
Haycock, K. (2011). Advocacy and influences. Retrieved from
http://kenhaycock.com/advocacyand-influence/
Haycock, K., & Sheldon, B. (Eds.). (2008). The portable MLIS: Insights from the
experts. Westport: Libraries Unlimited
Hirsh, S. (Ed.). (2018). Information services today: An introduction. Rowman & Littlefield.
Houston, A. (2016). From the president of RUSA: What’s in a name? Toward a new definition
of reference. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 55(3), 186-187. Retrieved from https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A1120ceb1-1e08-41a2-a208-83a64e2820e7
IDEO. (2014a). Design thinking for libraries: A toolkit for patron‐centered design. Retrieved
from https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18FN76ofJLHvRMpwqZQ1nMuV-AeGPvsZK
IDEO. (2014b). Design thinking in a day: An at-a-glance guide for advancing your library.
Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18FN76ofJLHvRMpwqZQ1nMuV-AeGPvsZK
Jacoby, J., & Kern, M. K. (2016). Management of reference services. In Smith, L.C., & Wong,
M.A. (Eds.). Reference and information services: An introduction. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.
Koizumi, M., & Widdersheim, M.M. (2016). Surpassing the business model: A public sphere
approach to public library management. Library Review, 65(6/7), 404–419. Retrieved from https://www-emerald-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/insight/content/doi/10.1108/LR-11-2015-0111/full/pdf?title=surpassing-the-business-model-a-public-sphere-approach-to-public-library-management
Koontz, C. (2008). Marketing—The driving force of your library. In Haycock, K., & Sheldon, B.
(Eds.). The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. Westport: Libraries Unlimited
Lehmann, V. & Locke, J. (2005). Guidelines for library services to prisoners (3rd ed.). IFLA
Professional Report, 92. The Hague: International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions.
Leonard, E. & Tedford, R. (2016). Marketing and promotion of reference services. In Smith, L.
C., & Wong, M.A. (Eds.). Reference and information services: An introduction. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.
Mongelli, W. (2017). Prison library management glossary. Retrieved from
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A38c20c35-9c38-40cf-a941-78b623411cb3
Moran, B.B. (2008). Management: An essential skill for today’s librarians. In Haycock, K. &
Sheldon, B. (Eds.). The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. Westport: Libraries Unlimited
Smith, L. C., & Wong, M.A. (Eds.). (2016). Reference and information services: An
introduction. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.
Stenstrom, C. (2016). Advocacy. In Smith, L.C., & Wong, M.A. (Eds.). Reference and information services: An introduction. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.
Tyckoson, D. (2012). Issues and trends in the management of reference services: A historical
perspective. Journal of Library Administration, 52(6–7). Retrieved from https://web-b-ebscohost-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=117ce8f8-6655-4266-afe6-7abe028f2f75%40pdc-v-sessmgr03
Tyckoson, D.A. (2008). Reference service: The personal side of librarianship. In Haycock, K. &
Romaniuk, M. J. (Eds.). The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. Libraries Unlimited.
Planning in a library setting for me means first strategic planning, and then the project/program planning and management that follow in its wake. The director of the XX library system (XXXX) Laura Dershowitz, identifies the steps in the strategic planning process, while emphasizing that the foundation for any strategic plan are an organization’s mission, vision, and values. An example of a comprehensive strategic plan can be seen in XXXX’s Strategic Framework, which includes details about key projects. The need for management at all levels emerges out of planning. A good definition of management is “using organizational resources to achieve objectives through planning, organizing, staffing (human resources), leading, and controlling,” where controlling means monitoring and assessing (Moran, 2018, pp 67-68). Moran identifies the hard and soft skills that managers need: political skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, people skills, and financial skills (2018, p. 72).
Jacoby and Kern list and elucidate the roles and responsibilities for a head reference manager (2016, pp 179-206) in a way that mirrors and expands on both Dershowitz and Moran. In a historical overview, Tyckoson describes managing reference services to be like “herding cats” (2012, p 599), and while he does not bring forth any management theory for the reference service profession in his literature review, he does offer useful management guidelines, including using a service model like RUSA’s. Similarly, Mongelli provides a “therapeutic service model” for the management of prison libraries, but his “management theory” comes in the form of a glossary of terms (Mongelli, 2017). Four years after Tyckoson’s overview, the president of RUSA noted that reference service providers “are increasingly called on to justify our value through statistics, surveys, and other kinds of data” (Houston, 2016). Gorman identifies this call to transform how reference services are managed as “corresponding more nearly to business practices” and rejects this call for having “no end-state to which they aspire” (2012, pp 115-116). Koizumi and Widdersheim compare a public library management model with a “shared value” business model and conclude that it is actually business practices that might need to take a lesson from public library management models (2016, pp 404-416). The latter researchers’ analyses read like Gorman when they argue that even though a business management model compares in some ways with public library management models, it “misses that how the value is created is more important than what the value is.” (Koizumi & Widdersheim, 2012, p 414). In 1876 Samuel Green described marketing as one of the four service roles for reference librarians, and Tyckoson points out that by this, Green meant that one could promote the library by helping people via the other three roles— instruction, question answering, and reader’s advisories (2008, pp 130-133).
Leonard and Tedford elaborate on how librarians can market their services and thus promote the library (2016, pp 281-304). Dempsey, in a historical overview of marketing in U.S. libraries, considers John Cotton Dana (1856-1929) to be the original marketing pioneer (2019, p 26) and models her own “true marketing, a deliberate process of finding out what people want, making it available, and then strategically promoting it” after Dana, while distancing her model from perceived critics (p 27). Both Leonard and Tedford, and Dempsey’s marketing models place themselves within a strategic framework that use tools like SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis (Dempsey, 2019; Leonard and Tedford, 2016). Even prison libraries consider marketing as an important aspect of an overall strategic plan (Lehmann & Locke, 2005, p 15). Library marketing has become entwined with communication and outreach efforts (Alman, 2018, pp 331-342), design and design thinking (Clarke, 2018, pp 278-287; Ideo, 2014a; Ideo, 2014b), and branding and merchandising (Dempsey, 2019, pp 37-38). Advocacy can be defined as a “planned, deliberate, sustained effort to develop understanding and support incrementally over time” (Haycock, 2011). Advocacy can be conceived as encompassing ideas like public relations, promotion, marketing, networking, persuasion, and lobbying within an advocacy plan that eventually has an outside influence on defining an audience, messaging, demonstrating value, and building relationships with influential partners (Stenstrom, 2018, pp 344-351).
Strategic planning for me is the overarching manner, that is to say the process by which an information organization comes to understand how it arrives at and comes to identify with a particular mission, vision, and set of values. From this place of understanding, information professionals have a foundation upon which to properly assess the output of the organization, its value in terms of materials, services, programs, projects and the like. I see management as the professional structure that enables informational professionals to come together to not only create, manage, and sustain a strategic plan, but also the operating of that plan day-by-day, month-by-month, year-after-year. Marketing and advocacy can be done at any level— from within a 5-year plan, or in relation to a particular project or program. The vast bulk of the marketing done by librarians, however, will probably be of the kind illustrated by Samuel Green, that is in myriad daily, face-to-face interactions with patrons in which they are literally the public face of the institution, and will by design reflect its values and embody its soul and spirit.
Preparation to Understand Competency D: Coursework and Work Experience
As an employee of the XX library system for over ten years I have become familiar with the ebb and flow of strategic plans and have experienced at two 5-year cycles through this process. As one of the largest circulating library systems in the county XXXX does an admirable job of coordinating what is an enormous, multi-year project that covers every department and staffing level for 50 library branches, and includes an administrative building, a materials processing center, and a juvenile detention facility. My direct experience with the process has largely been through large group brainstorming sessions with others throughout the system and filling out surveys and polls. Having worked at all 50 branches, and having spent time in the administration building, and because XXXX is very transparent about their organizational structure, I am fairly cognizant of the various management levels within the system and how these management levels intersect and connect with each other. My many years working in reference services, performing reference interviews to determine patron’s user needs, is a skill that also correlates to what a marketer hopes to achieve by surveying customers. XXXX’s marketing and branding is evident every day in the unobtrusive but attractive signage and logos used throughout the system, as well as a flurry of literature and web content, most of it designed to in-house specifications. I have worked on three XXXX committees— a staff recognition committee, an innovation committee, and a committee tasked with choosing XXXX awards (honoring organizational initiatives). All three of these committees were efforts coming out of strategic plan directives, and thus had potential implications for the organization as a whole.
Information Professions (INFO 204) prepared me for understanding how librarians construct broad strategic goals, and how this can affect how librarians go about designing, launching, promoting, and evaluating their programs. During my internship (INFO 294) at XXXX I noted that much of the publicity and promotion of programs was centrally managed, and so, while every librarian pursues a unique programming path, they must remain mindful of XXXX’s 5-year strategic plan. The internship showed me the importance of face-to-face engagement in outreach and advocacy, and marketing in community partnerships. For instance, in outreach attempts to a small, poor, rural, Spanish-speaking community, regular repeat visits by the same children’s librarian was a necessary prerequisite for building trust and bonding. In a Baby Boomer bootcamp I attended, colorful and attractive program literature designed by multiple agencies helped the program organizers to draw a large crowd. My work on over 40 XXXX library programs also exposed me to the many different ways that librarians planned and managed their projects, and how they advocated on behalf of the library system and the community. Over the course of the internship I also collected over nine different examples of planning templates used by librarians in planning their programs.
I chose my first piece of evidence because it connects practical decision-making directly to strategic planning and financial decisions, and because some of the outcomes touch on marketing and advocacy outcomes or solutions. My second evidentiary item was chosen for both my literature review research into how mission statements evolved for U.S research libraries, and for my contributions toward efforts the environmental scan and SWOT analysis, and how the two are a part of the same long-term planning process. My final evidentiary item I chose because I illustrate how the management structure of the library intersects with the management structure of the correctional justice system and touch on how and why advocacy can be such a powerful tool.
Evidence
20% Budget Cut
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a7WMKThQah7AeiNs2Qq73tyopxweT0Ruq5r_dYKp2Os/edit?usp=sharing
For Week 8 of my Information Professions (INFO 204) class, we were tasked with describing what we would do if the information organization we were working for suddenly had to make a 20% budget cut. I solved this conundrum for myself by researching just such an instance. I provide a synopsis of Spadafora’s story of the Newberry, a research library that, during the economic downturn of 2007-2008, suffered a 20% cut to their operating budget (Spadafora, 2012, p 111). I focus on how strategic planning did or did not work, and how management, with the assistance staff leaders in teams, was able to make some wise and crucial decisions during the crisis, and how they were able to rethink and revise the strategic plan so as to a) not lose sight of their mission while b) focus on organizational strengths. I highlight how the reworking of the strategic plan led to management reorganization, a reimagining of the facilities, and a rebranding of programs, which in turn opened up assistance from institutional peers and new revenue streams. (Spadafora, 2012).
My ability to research this paper, and understand the planning and management wisdom contained in this story shows that I understand strategic plans and management structure not simply as forms in need of filling, but rather as living, organic processes that are imagined, created, built, sustained, and refreshed through endless effort and application. I also think it shows that I understand that organizations are not simply kept together by managers, but by wise managers who understand how to lead, which sometimes can even mean marketing the library to staff when they are in danger of losing their jobs. Finally, I demonstrate how the reorganization of an organization’s setting can offer up opportunities to market the organization anew and/or advocate for the organization in novel new ways. Being able to articulate how these moving parts can keep an information organization afloat by mustering all the library’s combined strengths, is itself a strength or skill that I take with me into the work world.
Organizational Analysis Pt 1: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:1dae8882-7945-482a-bd8b-f18388329770
The major group project I worked on for Stenstrom’s Information Professions (INFO 204) class was a two-part organizational analysis of an information organization. My group chose to analyze the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), a research library. In the first part of our analysis we were to conduct a literature review, a SWOT analysis, and draw understanding from HSP’s mission, vision, and values statements. The primary work I did for this project was to conduct a thorough literature review. Because the HSP mission statements were incomplete and/or out-of-date, I focused my review on the historical evolution of mission statements for U.S. research libraries, which had the added benefit of providing relevant information for what a modern mission statement might look like for HSP in a revamped strategic plan.
My research shows how both public and academic visions for research libraries intertwine and overlap over time, how higher education and digitalization were forces that shaped both historical societies and their missions, and how important it is to not make presumptions about user needs. Finally, some of my research led to some truisms about how mission statements ought to be derived from outreach and understanding the library’s community base, how mission statements fail not from language or focus but from undefined goals, and how they generally need to be more visible to the public. I played a direct role in the constructing of HSP’s mission, vision, and values by tying them in with my research; the words were drawn from original statements, but I modified them to be more in-line for a modern, forward-looking institution. My contribution to the SWOT analysis was of a more general nature, focusing mostly on encouraging my co-researchers to fill out more detail in important areas such as sociocultural factors or naming HSP’s major competitors. I also had a hand in all the writing and synthesizing of our SWOT information especially our abstract and conclusion. Understanding how the information drawn into a SWOT analysis provides hard data for planning, and how the mission, vision, and values provides a foundation for that planning, are essential, practical skills I can bring to committee work and other library processes I might engage in.
Prison Library Management
Discussion of Evidentiary Items
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Ab07d3416-16ab-4534-b7aa-e4444d883e37
In the Seminar on Prison Library Management (INFO 282) I took with Professor Mongelli, I learned within the first week about core management principles; in Week 2 I was tasked with describing the interplay of prison library roles based on those principles and on what administrators expect. For this project I researched how the penitentiary system is organized and managed on a state and national level, with the aim of understanding their impact on correctional librarians. By doing this I was able to bring up library and correctional agencies (ALA and ACA respectively), and the concept of inter-agency service agreements, (the medium through by which library and correctional organizations communicate and partner with one another), and the many factors that influence these organizations and agreements like advocacy groups, or the State and Federal courts (to whom both agencies are beholden).
This confluence of factors enabled me to share the example of a court-ordered reform, in the form of an inter-agency document, which finally laid out standards for adult correctional libraries. I show that in essence, this was an example of how prisoner advocacy groups were able to arrange for a change in how prison libraries were managed, through a mandated, long-term plan that established prison law libraries and trained inmates how to be law clerks. I conclude by describing advocacy of the kind that tips political and legal scales toward a change in the planning or managing of prison libraries, the “court of public opinion,” and give another example when public pressure successful advocated for a reversal of a correctional management directive.
Planning, management, and advocacy within a correctional environment function differently than in say, a public library, but my ability to articulate how these concepts interact with and effect each other, why they might interact in this way, and how they affect library professionals, will be a useful skill within any information organization.
Conclusion
My understanding and skills regarding planning, management, marketing, and advocacy can be applied anywhere within an information organization. Working within one of the largest public libraries in the country, I could not help but absorb the idea that I am the face of the library, that I act as an ambassador or advocate for both the library and librarianship whenever I interact with the public. My many years working in reference services, performing reference interviews to determine patron’s user needs, is a skill that also correlates to what a marketer hopes to achieve by surveying customers. I can articulate how a strategic plan works or does not work and how effective management can keep an organization from imploding when the documents that guide our actions no longer serve the present reality, and I can describe the entire life cycle of what constitutes long-term planning in an information organization, as well as how that planning unfolds in day-to-day work. Finally, having the ability to see the interconnections between planning, management, marketing, and advocacy in my day-to-day work, enables me to function professionally at a high-level, and should serve me in any informational environment.
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