Planning For Results
STRATEGIC VISION
The District's facilities will be targeted for efficient and appropriate use, considering functionality, comfort, space, and productivity. Branches will be located to serve population, and while no new, single purpose construction is anticipated, the District will monitor demographic trends, and be prepared to address long term needs as they arrive.
Over the years, the District has invested heavily in buildings that are strategically located to serve the population. Tax dollars have been invested in construction and reinvested in expansions and renovations to establish structures which house the collections, provide essential space and furnishings for operations and public application, and meet the basic needs of multiple use customers. Because library services are fluid, changing needs have sometimes led to inconsistency in design, even within the same branch. Furnishings may differ stylistically and in utility; their heavy use has, and will lead to wear. Philosophically, the District has concentrated on getting people in and out of the branches quickly and has placed less emphasis on those who use the branch for extended periods.
While browsing and check out will be no less important over the coming years, increasing demand for electronic access terminals and greater use of in-house materials will lead the District toward more generalized concentration on functionality and comfort levels in public spaces. Staff areas cannot be further consolidated to afford additional service area. Meeting rooms cannot be sacrificed in favor of additional chairs and desks. Quiet areas cannot be foregone to place additional machinery. Therefore, it seems imperative that a significant capital expenditure program must be developed in conjunction with a well-reasoned and vigorous maintenance and renovation schedule for existing public service and administrative facilities.
The District's dedication to conservative spending for buildings and equipment will continue. However, there should be a better balance between function and aesthetics. Offering more comfortable furnishings, more amenable space utilization, more attractive surroundings should be attainable without compromising the District's essential dedication to economy. Warm, well lit, reading areas could be established. The idea of coffee bars should be pursued. The number of square feet allotted to work stations should be maximized. It should not be unreasonable to expect major expansion of all three regional branches in probable order of Middendorf-Kredell, Kathryn Linnemann, and Spencer Road to approximately 35,000 square feet by FY2008.
One of the key parameters for developing this strategic plan is that the District does not anticipate construction of new, single-use facilities over the next five to eight years. This does not preclude constructing a replacement Boone's Trail Branch, nor participating in the proposed Winghaven cooperative program, but does limit the likelihood that new facilities will spring up. However, because St. Charles is a growing, demographically fluid county, the potential need for such facilities in the long term must be monitored so the District is in position to respond. Several areas have been identified as likely targets for locating a branch library at some future time and investing capital to secure affordable land in target areas will receive strong consideration.
Staffing patterns, the organizational structure, and performance will be consistently monitored to assure efficient, yet flexible employee assignments with emphasis on quality customer service and continuing professional training.
The District has grown consistently within budgetary constraints, and in response to increasing consumer demand, but it is still functionally based on a small number of people with many skills doing many tasks. This is particularly true of the management staff. For example, branch managers have direct supervisory responsibility for branch operations, staffing, material allocations, routine maintenance and emergency repair, problem solving, trouble-shooting, and delivering public service. In addition they serve as a primary conduit of district-wide communication, as the most direct arbiter of policy explanation and interpretation, as both staff and public advocate, and often as a self-contained general contractor and construction manager. Administrative staff members rarely wear a single hat and even those whose particular titles imply singular responsibilities are often called upon to act in multiple capacities. Public service staff is called upon to divide time between reference and children's services, and between circulation and materials management. Thus there will be a strong imperative to assure that the organizational structure is fair and efficient, that it includes all the positions that it should, and that there is sufficient diversity to enact the service and support objectives the District is based upon.
Training will require new and increased emphasis. Continually expanding options in hardware, software and electronic resources require both operational and evaluative skills to determine the most efficient path to follow. Self-directed learning can be productive, but is not always the most effective method, and often competition for resources and time constraints disallow this option. It would be advisable for the District to have dedicated training facilities in which electronic resources are available for examination, exploration, and used for either independent or instructed learning. These centers should not compete with public access terminals, and general staffing must be adequate to allow off-desk time so staff can use them.
Similarly there must be increased general training, in customer service, personal development, and in library related areas. Class offerings must be supplemented by staffing patterns that allow time for in-service participation. The District is fortunate to have among its staff individuals who are both talented and dedicated teachers who want to share their knowledge with staff and patrons alike. This in-house resource can be supplemented through engaging consulting trainers, specialists, and vendor representatives to explain and implement best-practice procedures for product usage. The staff fully intends to develop detailed and comprehensive procedure manuals covering daily operations in circulation, reference, and page shelving. These guides will serve as ready reference sources for new staff training, problem solving, and trouble shooting the variable events that comprise the District's normal business day.
The Library District will maintain a stable, quality workforce, offering competitive wages and benefits, a consistent working environment, and appropriate recognition of outstanding performance among its staff. Internal communications, feedback, and staff participation reflective of a flattened organization will receive considerable emphasis.
The District has enjoyed a stable workforce, and has taken measures to reinforce its commitment to a quality staff. In FY2000, the staff and board undertook a significant evaluation and modification of the District's wage and salary system, changing the spread between steps within a track, and more closely tying individual classifications to both the track-step structure and relative wages within the governmental and quasi-governmental sector. Similarly, benefits were restructured to include part-time staff in the health insurance eligibility pool, and increasing vacation accrual for employees with tenure of fifteen or more years.
In the coming years, management staff will examine factors in overall staff satisfaction with myriad factors, including working conditions, schedules, employment status, participation, inclusion, and opportunity. Exit interviews will determine reasons for leaving and assist in overcoming potential problems. The Human Resources Department will undertake new and creative programs to encourage co-worker appreciation, teamwork, and coordination, and will encourage broad staff participation on committees, focus groups, and ad-hoc organizations formed to examine operational and strategic issues.
Similarly, staff communications will be emphasized. The Grapevine is an effective tool, which can only be improved by greater staff participation in forwarding information to be included in the weekly staff newsletter. There is considerable potential in developing an intranet resource for communication, including an online staff directory, policy and forms database, and centralized calendar of activities.
The District will actively manage its collection toward an overriding quality emphasis.
Collection quality should be based in several factors. Certainly, demand is a major consideration, and the District must be prepared for the clamor over the new best seller, for the next definitive home health guide, and whatever books the media features. However, it may not be possible to continually invest in large quantities of relatively few books backed by highly peaked demand curves with short life spans. The overall collection focus should be on having enough of what is needed, but realizing that more is not necessarily better. The District must balance its collection between short lived demand for specific items and long term, more general, demand for a wider variety of materials. This is particularly illustrated with the number and variety of electronically accessed resources available in the collection and those that are newly marketed each day. At present, it is safe to say that the staff does not have expertise in every resource we have, and thus cannot be skilled at finding or directing others in finding information with each product. It's likely that a needs-usage analysis would show that some products are so underutilized that they may warrant removal from the system to free up space or capacity for other formats. Consideration should be given to the most appropriate or efficient format depending on demand and capability.
The District's collection development policies are centered on broad appeal, and responsiveness to community wants and needs. The policies themselves seem well reasoned in both intent and function, and serve more than adequately as guidelines for managing the collection. There will still be a need to monitor and review the most efficient methods of selecting materials, balancing demand, particularly in the audio-visual collection, with the library mission, and long term vs. short term objectives. Systematic weeding will be needed to keep collections current and accurate, and to ameliorate the conflict between the demand for information, and the physically restricted space in which the collection is housed.
The District intends to centralize some collection functions through its Collection Development Manager. The manager will make recommendations regarding the overall collection, and through regular assignments in branch libraries, will have the chance to work with the staff to analyze individual resource centers. Branch input will be important and individual facilities will be able to configure their collections to demographic preferences. Similarly, a Catalog Manager will work with branch and administrative staff to increase the efficiency of and ease with which the catalog can be used. An improved database with enhanced cross referencing, see and see also capability, and more user friendly subject authority will benefit both staff and public users.
Effective collection management entails considerable evaluation of customer preferences, current resources, utilization, and budgetary allocations. The LISTEN2000 system has extremely desirable record management and analytical features which will allow accurate, timely assessments of usage, circulation frequency and regularity, and means of evaluating information flow. Similarly, the District will examine alternatives to streamline and improve the ordering-processing-delivery process. With its traditionally healthy budget allocation to materials, and the increasing placement of reserves, collection management in all forms will be increasingly important.
The District will continually emphasize quality services to all residents and patrons.
The Library District is a mature, well-defined entity, which is relatively secure in its community role, and secure of its community acceptance. The District will continue to exercise its core competencies in popular materials, reference, and children's services, but should assure that its services are available to even more patrons. Considerable effort should be made to increase services to the underserved, those who cannot or do not enter our facilities. The outreach program is strong, and will doubtlessly assume an even more central role in meeting needs external to our branches. We will have to be aware of and consider the differences in heritage, language, and culture that will arise as the county becomes more diverse. Again, we must be reminded of demographic indicators that establish that cultural diversity is neither isolated nor geographically specific and thus we must expect special needs to arise in virtually all service areas.
Library sponsored programming will increase in importance, both as a tool for disseminating information, and as a vehicle for marketing the library's resources and importance. Programs both inside the district, and those carried to remote locations will help meet the community's thirst for information, discourse, and objectivity, and this should be seen as a primary facet of our mission.
It is further likely that the District's specialty areas will receive increased attention and demand. The District should anticipate the need for increased material and staff support in these areas, greater cooperation among the specialties, particularly resource sharing between Government Documents-GIS and the Business and Government Services area. Additionally, we anticipate a dramatic increase in value-added services, especially through web-based and electronic resources. These value-added devices may be accessed through, or separately from the Westplex Information Network, but tied irrevocably to the Library District's service scope. While measurement and counting will be key to evaluating the service level provided, value-added does have high potential, and will require careful, yet aggressive planning. Local History and Genealogy plans to aggressively augment its collection's availability, particularly through electronic means, and thus from points outside the Linnemann Branch itself. Considerable amounts of material are not, and may not be for some time, available in digital formats or through net access, but the specialty plans to scan original information to increase access to local information. In FY2001, the District will add a new specialty -- Not-For-Profit Services, working with charitable organizations to establish or improve their operations, counsel them on board and staff development, fund-raising, and accomplishing their missions.
With all the potential mentioned above, fundamentally, the District must continue its high level of service to those who use our facilities regularly and well. Excellent customer service and efficient provision of information of all types should, and must, remain our service focus. There is doubtless strong potential in expanding information literacy programming, teaching patrons to better use the rich resources the library has to offer, and helping them maximize their own effectiveness as library users. The District's outward role of information provider to the county should include a referral function so that those in need can contact the library to find out how their particular problem could be addressed, and by whom.
In the long run, it may be advisable to seriously consider the question of how patrons and customers can access and use the library without entering one of the District's branches. Remote access from home, or perhaps from kiosks located strategically throughout the county could increase resident's ability to use the library's electronic resources, value added service, catalog, and specific resources on a virtually limitless basis. Problems such as log-in identification, product licensing for off-site or multi-site use will have to be resolved, but the potential for remote access is outwardly strong.
Forging and maintaining strategic partnerships in the community will expand and enhance the level of service provided to county residents.
The District has never been an isolated entity, and has welcomed alliances with other agencies and institutions. The emphasis from the 1992 Strategic Plan, "Steer, don't row" will continue as we try to increase our contacts and productivity along with others. A project such as the potential virtual library in conjunction with the Winghaven development is very attractive, though the nature of business in the area may force a higher technical and technological orientation than is traditional for a public library. Similarly the idea of Business Roundtable formed among representatives of the business community to advise and help market the District's business services specialty should be explored.
The public forums that contributed heavily to founding this strategic plan indicated a strong need to ally with educational and social service agencies to contribute to the county's overall quality of life. This does not mean the District should expand its formal support for elementary and secondary curriculum, nor serve as a replacement for either school or college libraries, though our resources are used heavily by students preparing class assignments. The possibility of initiating Life Long Learning as a library service response is one that has been considered, and may fit well into library-educational cohesiveness.
In general, the District should seek to identify those service areas that intersect with other agencies within the community with the fundamental objective of improving overall services to the public at large.
Virtually every group that studied strategies for this plan sees the need for community partnerships. Examples include Not-For-Profit Services partnering with the Missouri Association for Philanthropy; Local History and Genealogy associating with local and statewide historical organizations. The group studying Community Referral centered many of their recommendations on partnerships with various social and special service organizations. Government partnerships should benefit both Geographic Information System services as well as Business and Government services. Schools, day-centers, and organizations can be central to the Children's Services role.
Additionally, the process focused on expanded administrative partnering. Fundraising in conjunction with other organizations has been successful in other settings, and may be in the library as well. Marketing partnerships, both sponsorships and sharing information are feasible. The District plans on partnering with current LISTEN libraries, potentially offering discount prices to maintain their respective affiliation. The Friends of the Library and the Library Foundation form the nucleus of the District's closely related partners, and their role can be expanded over the coming years. Recent discussions with Family Support Services exemplify the potential for both advice on collection development, and for expert guidance on dealing with the special needs population of the county.
The District will continue to operate under conservative, service-driven budgets, financing its operations primarily through tax revenues, but will expand and open alternative revenue streams.
The existing tax base seems secure for the coming years, as St. Charles County continues to grow and develop. Thus we anticipate having sufficient, recurring income to fund our operations and services. However, the District, like all taxing districts, is subject to externalities imposed by various governmental agencies in the county through Tax Increment Financing Districts, abatements, and economic development initiatives. Present earnings potential in the tax base can be eroded, theoretically to develop future revenue, and thus the District must be cognizant of municipal abatements and tax-redirection and the impact they bring to bear on countywide services.
At the same time, there exists potential to derive non-tax revenues through grants for specific projects and activities, through donated income, through managed investment of Friends' assets, and through cultivation of deferred gifts. Since a penny of tax currently raises approximately $350,000, significant external fundraising would be required to match the power of tax based revenue, but the District should not ignore the chance to defray any part of its current dependence on property values and derived income.
The Friends of the Library have donated $50,000 to $80,000 in each of the last five years. The Library Foundation has set a goal of raising $20,000 during its first year in existence. The District will expand participation in grants available from the state library and private sources, particularly for projects that because of their technological or local interest basis seem most likely to qualify.
The District has, and will continue to base its expenditures on critical justification. The Board of Trustees, over time, has demonstrated a careful perspective toward its fiduciary responsibilities, and maintains sufficient financial oversight to assure that expenditures are justifiable and affordable. The staff is accustomed to minimal frills and enhanced utility from the capital improvements made, from equipment purchases, and from each dollar spent in salaries and benefits.
The District will undertake and utilize expanded marketing to promote its programs, services, and mission.
Marketing will be of paramount importance over the next years. The District has established and enjoys good relationships with local media, and has maximized available public service space, free articles, schedules of events, and feature articles. Paid advertising has been effective and will be increased over time. Several planning groups have strongly recommended general and targeted marketing campaigns to increase public awareness of their mission and services, and the Board-Staff review panel has emphasized the need for greater marketing of all library services.
This increase cannot happen without a corresponding augmentation of funds allocated to the Children's Resources and Marketing Department and thus the intended expansion exerts a significant effect on the District's budget. The CRM Department functions as the District's public relations, publications, and marketing division, in addition to coordinating Children's Programming, with a total regular staff equivalent to 1.7 Full Time Equivalents. The FY2001 Budget recommends adding a full time Communications Specialist who will both write promotional text, and will desirably have notable skills in graphic design, layout, and production. Paid advertising is relatively expensive -- estimates for monthly half-page layouts run into the mid-twenty thousand dollar range, but such advertisements do guarantee that the intact material will appear, when and where the District chooses. Similarly the publications budget will have to grow. As services expand, for example into Information Literacy, Community Referral, Lifelong Learning, etc., additional brochures, literature and schedules will need to be published. The increased marketing called for in strategies affecting the Local History and Genealogy, Government Documents and GIS, Business and Government Services, and Non-Profit Services will add to the publications required to conduct daily business. The CRM Department will also be called upon to use their expertise to assist the Friends of the Library, the Library Foundation, and to some degree, the District's partners to maximize the effectiveness of print matter.
Virtually every phase of library service can benefit from the District's marketing. One of the most prominent groups identified is the planning process is the non-user, those who for one reason on another do not use the resources, services, or facilities the District has to offer. Marketing efforts can be made to reach those who cannot or do not enjoy the benefits of our system. While we must pay attention to that group, our foremost effort must be made toward those who are patrons, those who are casual users and those who regularly and well use that which we have to offer. Enhanced marketing could make their experiences more enjoyable and rewarding by increasing their knowledge of what is going on, and what is available, particularly with new collections and services. The tax payers who fund this District's operations need to know that their money is well spent, on relevant materials, on expedient services, and on meeting public informational needs.
There are boundless opportunities for the District to expand its marketing, and as time passes such efforts will be increasingly important. New residents arrive daily. Those with special needs require greater knowledge of how those needs can be met. Our resources, talents, and public service ethic need to be touted so that all are aware that libraries are no longer simply depositories of books, but are places rich in information, free and available for the asking. It is time now, to take steps that will have impact for years to come.
The District will maintain its position on the cutting edge of technology and telecommunications.
The 1994 Strategic Plan made only loose reference to internet technology, planning a governmental consortium to provide internet services. Most of the electronic information effort focused on CD-ROM technology. Today, net and network technology provides an ever expanding base for information access, and CD-ROM products are constantly evaluated against similar or identical products available through internet access. Given the scope of change over the last six years, who can guess what will follow?
The District's Information Technology Department has assumed major responsibility for maintaining and expanding resources and access. From the LISTEN2000 system with its current sophistication and enormous potential for monitoring and managing the collection, to improving telephonic communications, to maintaining intranet and internet access, the District's local and wide area networks, IT has functioned above and beyond the call. The Telecommunications and Technology budget reflects the staff's and board's commitment to training, equipment upgrades, enhanced operations, and cooperative relationships with the State of Missouri, technology consultants, and working partners.
Over the next years, the District will strive to provide hardware and software that accesses information quickly and supports changing interfaces and query techniques. It will endeavor to increase the availability of online information, particularly from the Information Resource specialties, thus offering greatly enhanced user flexibility and access. Digital imaging will be particularly important to the Local History and Genealogy collection, and expanded capability and interfaces will enhance Geographic Information Systems ability to meet new needs and uses.
The District will face many challenges as the county's technological infrastructure grows and as the people become more sophisticated in their use and understanding of computerized information. A detailed technology plan must be written during FY2001, one that consider how resources can best be acquired, utilized, and managed for the highest benefit. In any case, it is obvious that the District's dependence on and use of highly sophisticated technology will grow year by year, and it must and will be able to maintain its highly successful and enviable position as the county's source of information.