Strategic Planning
UB Libraries Strategic Plan

July 2002

Contents

 

Message from the Associate Vice President for University Libraries

It is a privilege to present the University Libraries’ Strategic Plan for the next two years.  This document represents the diligent efforts of a cross section of our faculty and staff and concludes more than six months of focused, rigorous effort.  In an exciting era of unprecedented change that broadly affects information resources and library services, we have endeavored to set directions and priorities that will best serve the research, teaching, and learning interests of our University’s faculty and students.  As the plan details, we pledge to sustain important traditional values while embracing new technologies and exploiting their impressive capabilities to provide services that would have been unthought of only several years ago.  We have surveyed the University at Buffalo community, taken heed of our users’ compliments and criticisms, examined what other academic libraries have done and are doing, and crafted a plan that will challenge our collective talents and yield results that will excite and please information seekers on all levels.  This Strategic Plan outlines our intended course of action.  It is ambitious but attainable, and all of us in the University Libraries are committed to making it happen.  We look to you, our users, for your continued support and constructive feedback.  Together, we will make the University Libraries increasingly responsive and effective, providing you with better access to the information resources you need and better developing services that blend effectively with the ways in which you work, teach, conduct research, and learn.

Barbara von Wahlde

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Organizational Development and Culture Change

As UB’s Information Technology area has engaged in a culture change process recently, it is appropriate that we do the same.  We are a hierarchical organization with Libraries located on two campuses.  While our organization and structures as well as our style has seemed adequate, we need to enhance our ability to communicate and work across units for the greater good of the University Libraries in providing service and support for our users’ needs and wants. 

The organizational management style of the Libraries had been one that was top down with less coming up from the lower levels.  The process used in our strategic directions setting, however, was deliberately crafted to be more inclusive, more open, and provide more frequent internal communication across the organization.  Our Core Planning Group (CPG) included staff from all personnel classifications and from diverse Libraries.  The utilization of talent, energy, and special skills within the Libraries, regardless of unit and job classification, is an important element in creating a future work environment which will help all staff understand where we are going and how we will get there.

While we were engaged in our environmental scan as part of the Strategic Directions process within the Libraries, we also participated during the spring in the LibQUAL Survey endorsed and supported by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).  One of scores of ARL library participants across the country, we gained feedback from our faculty and student users.  The convergence of the two examinations, one internal and one external, led to a special synchronicity for developing directions to chart our course for the next eighteen to twenty-four months.  Early in our planning cycle we were able to hold two faculty focus groups with our consultant.  Those results when compared with the LibQUAL Survey, verified through a greater magnitude of replies, the concerns of our faculty and students.

We strive for balance, new ideas and approaches, careful listening and consultation, communication throughout the organization, and a reasonable dose of realism.  Our Libraries and the staff will be transformed in our activities by more attention to fact finding, environmental scanning, seeking new and different models and embracing innovation.  This will be fostered by the use of action group volunteers to tackle special projects, benchmarking service development, utilizing the enthusiasm of our workforce, and the wide variety of skills represented.  The Libraries and the staff at all levels will be well informed and aware of our directions and how they contribute and make a difference to providing a higher degree of satisfaction and service support for our University community.

In various Town Meetings and through frequent electronic messages, I have emphasized that we will not return to the Library administrative style of the last decade.  The promise of new developments in our field in a world of constant change creates an opportunity for us to better provide, improve, and modernize what we have been successfully doing as a Library for more than one hundred and fifty years. 

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Defining the Planning Process

University Libraries strategic planning is a collaborative yet disciplined process that functions under the guidance of our organizational values, and requires Libraries staff to: focus our creative energy in identifying significant issues that challenge the Libraries; and use our collective knowledge to help determine how we will achieve our organizational directions over the next few years. The Libraries Core Planning Group worked to nurture the development of the planning process, and then a plan, with the help and active participation of the Libraries staff in the collection of empirical information, surveys and interviews of our users, and reviews of our strengths and past successes.  The Libraries staff through the work of current and future CPGs will continue to offer flexible strategic plans that will address the most critical challenges and set new directions for the Libraries. The ultimate benefit of this process is, hopefully, the staff’s ongoing development and application of strategic thinking and planning principles in their day to day work.

 

Mission Statement and Shared Values

The University Libraries embrace the principle of excellence in the provision of information resources and technologies to support the teaching, research, and service missions of the University at Buffalo. Our values help us to know what is important. Values guide our actions. They remind us of the business we are in, education; the people we serve; how we choose to work together; how we choose to treat each other and our patrons/clients.

During meetings in November 2001with University Libraries staff members and Lou Wetherbee, a nationally known library consultant from Texas, we worked on expressing our shared values. A draft compilation of those values was reviewed, discussed and modified by the University Libraries staff at a Town Meeting on April 9, 2002. The three-part values statement below represents the final draft of the values of the University Libraries staff.

Working together, we value:

In providing service to our users, we value:

In building and maintaining collections of diverse materials, we value:

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Introduction to The University at Buffalo Libraries’ Strategic Plan

After several months of concentrated effort, from initial meetings of our Core Planning Group in November 2001, to intensive work by environmental scan sub-groups, to several Town Meetings at which the staff actively participated in shaping a plan with valuable and essential input, our Plan with five strategic directions is ready to be implemented.  Our initial five strategic directions are grouped under three main themes:

Under each of these themes are Directions that were developed by the Core Planning Group with the direct input of staff at our Town Meetings this spring.  Action Items, under each Direction, reflect the key issues which staff determined as ways of knowing whether or not we were meeting the issues in each Direction.

Considering the time and resources required to address all of the Directions and Action Items, the Core Planning Group wrestled with narrowing our attention to a few Directions that are essential to address within the first year of the Plan by volunteer Action Groups.  Those Directions and Action Items are in larger typeface in the Plan and marked “Priority Action Item.”  Since the Core Planning Group wanted to insure the inclusion of other Directions and Action Items that were developed as a result of user and staff input, we have included the remainder in smaller typeface in the Plan.  These less urgent but very important Directions and Action Items will remain part of the Plan and may be addressed by our library units and existing interest groups, as appropriate to the particular unit’s goals and directions or the topic of the interest group. Items marked “EZ” are items on which work has already begun and may be completed relatively early in the plan.

Our work toward fulfilling the Plan will be reviewed on a periodic basis at “STOP” (State Of the Plan) Meetings, at which Action Groups discuss the progress they have made with the staff-at-large, for their input and response.  STOP Meetings will be more interactive than our Town Meetings and will require active involvement by our staff.

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TALENTS

Talents 1: Environment

Direction: Create an environment that fosters an involved, informed, and appreciated staff.

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Talents 2:  Freedom

Direction:  Give staff the freedom to use their judgment, to accept responsibility and to take appropriate action.

 

Direction: Audit and assess current communication practices and mechanisms in terms of effectiveness and image.

 

Direction: Develop training programs for staff.

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FOUNDATIONS

Foundations 1:  Facilities

Direction: Improve design of facilities to incorporate flexibility for numerous uses and create an environment conducive to scholarship and research, and learning.

 

Foundations 2:  Collaborative relationships

Direction: Develop collaborative relationships with other campus units to address technology, facilities, and financial resources.

 

Direction: Focus financial resources and personnel on digital collections.

 

Direction: Explore appropriate new technologies to meet staff and user needs.

 

Direction: Commit to an active fund-raising and grantsmanship program reflective of the University Libraries' mission.

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DELIVERABLES

Direction: Establish ongoing evaluation of library resources and services to support teaching and research.

Direction: Develop a robust library web presence that will provide access to library resources and services where and when patrons need them.

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The Core Planing Group maintains a current Strategic Planning Progress Chart. View the chart in [EXCEL or PDF] format.

 

 

Content provider: Ken Hood
Comments: lib-staffweb@buffalo.edu
Last update: 27 October, 2004

 

UB Libraries Strategic Plan

strategic planning process

Core Planning Group/CPG

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environmental scans

action group reports

town forum minutes