|
|
Visions, Goals & Objectives
Instructions & Index
Instructions:
We have now come to the temporary end of data collection and analysis. It is time to think about how to use the information you've gathered and reflected upon.
What does all this say to you about what they library ought to be intending to do? Sometimes the analysis of the data will lead you to affirm what you are doing - rejoice! But there is a warning, too. If you only find affirmation if is important to ask yourself if you are the only perfect library in the country of if you have missed a few things.
The most interesting discovery is often that there are some things that you are doing very well that you don't need to be doing at all. Perhaps you've completed a task, met a goal or perhaps times have changed and you no longer need to be doing what you have become accustomed to.
Or, perhaps you haven't had a systematic plan reflecting data about the community. Let's start here.
Worksheet 6A:
Now we have come to the visionary part of the planning process. The two sentences at the top of worksheet 6A distinguish a Vision Statement from the goals and objectives you will be writing up later in this module.
After writing the Vision Statement you will use it to guide the wording of your Goals so that they reflect the aims and direction of your Vision Statement.
At the bottom of Worksheet 6B-1 you'll find four statements about goals that will help you differentiate them from a Vision Statement or from Objectives. Here are the stages in developing Goals for your library:
- 1. Review your notes, ideas and the data from Worksheets 1-5 so you can answer the two questions in the rectangle at the top of Worksheet 6B-1.
- 2. The two questions in the hexagon are for your contemplation and may lead you to search for more information.
- 3. It might be helpful to complete Worksheet 6B-2. There is NO reason to expect your numbers across each horizontal row to be identical. You probably wouldn't want that. But by completing or estimating the numbers on this chart you will have an idea of your current realities. There are many good reasons for divergence. For example, if you are the only agency in the community serving young adults you may want a higher percentage of your resources to be directed toward them than their population percentage. On the other hand, if you were to discover that the proportion of your community that fits into the category "Children" has decreased in the past five years, it is time to assess whether you should be shifting your resources and services.
There are two parts to Worksheet 6B-3.
1. Write a goal, that is an intention, something you would like to work toward. This is not a description of what you are doing. It may relate to
- Services, including programming
- Collections
- Staffing
- Fund raising
- Space
- Technology
As the second statement at the bottom of Worksheet 6B-1 says, it is an intention toward a particular clientele or topics. (See the Examples page.)
2. Most importantly, identify on Worksheet 6B-3 the data that suggests reasons for Goal #1. If you cannot find a reason for stating that goal, ask yourself if it is really a personal desire and not something the community really needs.
Goal #1 for Blank Public Library may be accompanied by two reasons: there is no other source in the community for information about healthy leisure and relaxation activities and people in the focus groups stated that they were increasingly concerned about what to do in their spare time. Further details might point out that parents of young children wish there was more to do in the town, that the near retired folk expressed concerns about what they would be doing in the next few years and that the activities of the new Arts Council weren't known very widely.
As you see on the Examples page, these reasons can lead you to the objectives.
If you can't state a reason for a goal you might also ask yourself whether or not you are writing a goal, i.e. is it broad enough? Is it geared to the clientele?
Remember that each goal is going to have a set of objectives attached to it (see Worksheets 6C-1 and 6C-2). You may want to skip to worksheet 6C-1 to work on your objectives for Goal #1 and then return to Worksheet 6B-3 to write another goal.
At the top of Worksheet 6C-1, Objectives Worksheet, characteristics of objectives are identified. See how they differ from goals? After you have written 2 goals, see that each goal is broad enough so it has several components that can be identified as objectives (see Examples page).
Worksheet 6C-1 and Worksheet 6C-2 give you space to write your objectives for Goals #1 and 2. You will break those objectives down even further into action steps which include the completion date for accomplishing this action step (i.e. when are you going to either cross it off or renew it?), the person responsible for each action step, and the evaluation plan that will enable you to measure whether or not you have successfully met the action step. When the actions steps are all checked off, then the objective can also be checked off. Objectives and action steps will have varying timelines and will be met more quickly than the broader goals of your plan that they support and further.
Obviously, you are not limited to the number of goals or objectives on these pages...you can copy the pages as many times as you need.
Index:
|
