This resource is designed for public library boards to use before starting a strategic planning process. It provides a series of reflections, considerations, and good practices to help ensure that strategic planning efforts:
- Draw upon best practices and then are adapted to your realities, making them wise practices;
- Responsibly steward the public resources entrusted to you;
- Are adapted to fit the unique context of your library system; and
- Energize the people involved!
This is not a step-by-step guide to strategic planning. There are myriad tools available to library boards that outline the components of strategic planning.BCLTA’s Governance Workbook identifies key elements of a strategic plan and there are many books and guides online, some of which are listed in this source.
This document was developed in conversation with information, input, and learnings gathered over years of interacting with BC library trustees, in particular two facilitated group dialogues with trustees from around BC in the late summerof 2020. The knowledge shared in this document does not belong to any one individual and is not the “one true” resource for preparing for strategic planning. It is meant to gather knowledge and share it to the library trustee community in the hopes of complimenting the immense amount of knowledge that trustees bring to public library governance.
This work was made possible with funding from the Public Libraries Branch, Province of British Columbia.
Preparing for Strategic Planning: A BCLTA Resource (January 2021)