Planning For Results
Analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
The District is benefited by a strong, supportive Board of Trustees, which maintains a progressive and countywide outlook toward library services, and exercises careful, yet flexible processes in decision making and visioning.
The District is comprised of a knowledgeable, caring staff that shows considerable dedication to service, professionalism, and courtesy.
The District is decentralized which allows a wider distribution of resources throughout the County and augments the District's countywide service focus by providing balanced technology, staffing, collections, and public access.
The District maintains a strong base in technology, and is known for its focus on maximizing electronic resources. This firm emphasis on cutting edge information access blends well with a relatively comprehensive paper collection which, over time, has served the popular materials, reference, children's emphasis areas well.
The District is financially stable and operates upon fiscally conservative, well-reasoned budgets. Tax-based sources provide a steady and adequate revenue stream for general operations.
WeaknessesFacilities are aging, and have become limiting in terms of space available to house collections, deliver services, and provide areas for in-library activities. Even though electronic resources theoretically can access the equivalent of ranges of print media, hardware, furnishings, and users still consume a large footprint of available floor space. Open public space, seating, and comfort are jeopardized by the need to provide the materials and services needed to support growing demand. Maintenance will become increasingly important, yet increasingly difficult as facilities continue to age, and to depreciate with increased public traffic and usage. Branch managers spend considerable time analyzing building problems, soliciting bids for maintenance / repair work, and overseeing the process. It may be necessary to engage a one-call coordinator to handle the detail work as requirements increase.
Keeping up with technology is becoming more and more difficult. The District's MIS staff is stretched thin. Most of the District's public computers are not presently configured to handle Shockwave, Java, and other advanced programming modes. Electronic resources must be evaluated in terms of value added vs. what the District can reasonably afford, and what access medium is most effective and efficient. The public wants computerized resources, internet access, speed and dependability, but lacks fundamental knowledge about how to use these assets. Staff spends considerable time providing basic training to unskilled individuals instead of assisting people with informational searching.
Collection management is made difficult by unpredictable needs and growth patterns. The demand for new materials creates an imperative to buy while space limitations create a conflicting mandate to weed. This creates the potential for wasting material with inherent value. Dated or ineffective materials should be weeded, particularly in the non-fiction collection, but the absolute necessity to create shelf space can be risky to the collection's overall comprehensiveness and appeal. The idea of having regional branches serve as long-term repositories for important, yet low demand, materials has not proven overly successful due to the same space / demand imperatives. Branch specific materials selection may lead to duplication of resources and less than effective space utilization. Greater coordination and communications in ordering materials may be needed.
Rapidly changing demographic and growth patterns have introduced considerable uncertainty and unpredictability to the District's service perspective, and its ability to cope. Traffic, circulation, ILMU, reference, and programming have all increased to serve to customers, but the need for generalization has led to decreased ability to provide niche services or products. In order to maintain essential services, the District has not been able to reach many individuals who do not, or cannot, visit the library. The underserved and unserved are different groups which require different tactics.
The District's increasing scope and size has changed the nature and effectiveness of communications and training. It is nearly impossible to assure true District-wide communication because not all staff is subscribed to internal listserves, and although all branches receive multiple copies of the Grapevine, no one can assure that everyone reads it every week. Staff development days present the opportunity to gather large numbers of employees, but developing a program that applies and appeals to the personal and professional diversity of nearly 300 individuals is nearly impossible. Both time and facilities restrict training. No one doubts the need for nearly constant training in computer and electronic usage, but at present, the District does not have sufficient, capable, surplus computers to support intensive training programs. Neither does it have the facilities to set up, and leave in place computer resources for classes of even ten to twelve individuals. Furthermore, the number of people who should be engaged in training requires holding multiple class sessions, and thus a considerable time commitment is required of those who conduct training on top of their other assigned duties. Even if these weaknesses could be overcome, the District will have to address significant problems with its ability to free staff from their routine duties in order to attend training sessions.
The District's current means of evaluating its quality of service is limited. The statistical information gathered from circulation and traffic, the number of reference responses provided, and the people responding to programming provides some basis for measuring acceptance, but we need to evaluate customer satisfaction in terms of the collection, service, performance, and overall expectations.
The District's track record and willingness to invest in technology has placed it in a position to ride the wave of continued advancement. As resources diversify and supporting hardware increases in capability, the District should be able to, and must, continue its leadership in exploiting availability.
The community will be comprised of a diverse population, better educated and enjoying a higher standard of living than most, and will expect more from their libraries than books and information. The District will have increasing opportunities to serve as a resource center for community, political, and issue oriented information as well as meeting the personal needs and preferences of our patrons.
The District will have great opportunities to market its products and services to new customers, underserved customers, and to find ways to attract non-users. The growing segment of retirees will expect attention, and the older population will present increasing opportunities for creative outreach services. Business services and joint ventures with technical and back-office commercial operations will offer chances to increase the number and depth of cooperative efforts.
The District is not over-invested in its facilities, and thus has the option of dramatic renewals, including potentially demolishing existing buildings in order to replace them with modern, technologically planned and sophisticated structures intentionally designed to maximize open space, "Barnes and Noble" type reading areas, coffee bars, and comfortable, private areas for using resources.
Technology has the potential for outstripping the District's ability to cope with its volatility. The amount of information available increases logarithmically and it is increasingly difficult to determine the best format to select. Internet resources are often more versatile than and identical product on CD, and less expensive in terms of auxiliary equipment, but are subject to the vagaries of transmission, including network outages and breakdowns far beyond the District's control or ability to manage. The need for staff and public training will place demands on staffing flexibility and District financing which have
The District must aggressively commit to adequate, flexible staffing to allow time off-desk for training. Additionally, a permanent, conveniently accessible training facility well supplied with capable computer hardware, audio-visual projection, and networking will be needed to maintain staff familiarity with ever changing products and technology.
Unpredictable growth patterns make locating and sizing facilities an uncertain art. While much of the county's population will still live in the Golden Triangle, the southwest portion of the county, the O'Fallon-Lake St. Louis-Wentzville corridor north of I-70 could have 1980's rate growth potential and change population distribution significantly. Continued development of outlying areas inside St. Charles County and in Warren, Lincoln, and Pike counties could put accelerated pressure on Corporate Parkway, Deer Run, and Middendorf-Kredell, not to mention Boone's Trail and South County.
The District is some 95 percent dependent on tax-based financing which currently provides a steady stream of income. Growth will continue for the foreseeable future, but will eventually slow, as witnessed in the City of St. Charles. The threat of diminished revenue, with increased demands, resulting from TIFs, abatements, and industrial development projects could harm the relative adequacy of cash flows. The District must monitor economic development projects, and must develop alternative sources of income -- as a note a one-cent tax increment raises approximately $330,000 in tax revenue.
To a large degree, the District's management staff is relatively the same age, and thus will reach retirement at approximately the same time. While this will likely not happen over the scope of this strategic plan, the threat remains that there may be a relatively simultaneous turn over of the District's most experienced management and supervisory personnel.
Because the District's essential structure is specified in Missouri Statutes, and Board appointments are, currently made by the Mayor of St. Charles and the County Executive, the District must be aware of the political climate in the state and county. Twenty five years ago the Board's political bent negatively affected the District, and we must maintain the cooperative, service focused, Board-Staff relationships we have enjoyed recently. Similarly, the District must be attuned to community standards and expectations so that it is able to provide high levels of information accuracy and acceptance without jeopardizing the comprehensiveness and balance needed for a first class materials collection.