Library Strategic Planning Effort, final team meeting

Starting this past April, Blanchard Library has had a team developing a 5-year Strategic Plan.

 Board of Trustee leaders Laura Phillips and Maureen Coughlin assembled a diverse team of volunteers who bring a variety of ideas, concerns, needs and wants to the process.  The team includes two staff members, Ned Branch (Interim Director) and Ilene Gavenman (Librarian).  Other members include Juan Corona, Jr. (literacy tutor), Liam Collins, Lynn Cowell, Fabian Mauricio, Jessenia Montiel and Mireille Vargas.  Carlos Juarez also contributed ideas and feedback early in the process.  The team was very lucky to find Bill Cordeiro to work as their facilitator.  Bill is the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at the MV Smith School of Business & Economics, CSU Channel Islands and has extensive experience guiding strategic planning efforts.  

The strategic planning process began by identifying the library’s values and developing Mission and Vision statements.  

In order to incorporate as much community input and data as possible, the team then did targeted outreach interviews, and made use of internal and external surveys, as well as demographic and library usage data.

Using this groundwork, the team addressed library strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The opportunities identified were converted into key strategies and specific objectives.   Action plans for the objectives are currently under final development with evaluations of timing, resources and measurement goals included.