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Arizona Public Libraries
Planning for Results
A strategic plan helps your library realize its full potential and achieve its role in the community.
The classic resources in the “Results” Series has long served to help public librarians envision, evaluate, and respond to community needs with distinctive programs and services. They will equip librarians to react swiftly by surveying the environment and transforming services to effectively meet changing community needs. They are an all-in-one guides that outline tested processes.
PLA Results Series Workforms
The Public Library Association and E-Learn Libraries partnered to offer electronic versions of the workforms from the popular PLA Results series.
These forms are available free of charge to the thousands of librarians who are using the books in the series to make management decisions in their libraries. The instructions and workforms included in each title can be accessed by clicking on the appropriate title below. You can download these work forms, enter data from your library, and save them on your computer. If you wish to take the class online go to E-Learn Libraries, Inc.
Some sample plans are listed below. If you need help with planning or facilitation contact Malavika Muralidharan
Sandra Nelson and June Garcia, Creating Policies for Results: From Chaos to Clarity. American Library Association, 2003.
This comprehensive how-to book addresses each major area of library services: governance and organizational structure, management policies, and services relating to customers, circulation, information, and groups. The book provides guidelines to help library staff assess existing policies and revise and develop new ones. The book also provides the tools needed to communicate the new and revised policies to ensure that staff have the information they need to do their jobs and that library users receive consistently excellent service.
Rhea Joyce Rubin, Demonstrating Results: Using Outcome Measurements in Your Library. American Library Association, 2005.
Demonstrating Results help libraries evaluate and present outcomes so they can document the positive work they do in a concrete way and gain financial support.
Jeanne Goodrich and Paula M. Singer. Human Resources for Results: The Right Person for the Right Job. Public Library Association, 2007.
Expanding on the highly effective PLA Results Series, Goodrich and Singer offer PLA colleagues a strategic approach to the human resources (HR) function in the library. The book focuses on a variety of possible projects and how to staff them, allowing each library to decide where and how to focus their attention. It includes everything needed to deploy HR strategically in the library and:
· Align staff resources with what needs to be done
· Identify the right people for the right jobs and develop meaningful job descriptions
· Create a high-performance work force through performance plans, coaching, and evaluation
· Retain the best and brightest by creating the culture, designing expectations, and building commitment
Sandra Nelson. Implementing for Results: Your Strategic Plan in Action. American Library Association, 2009.
For nearly two decades, the Public Library Association’s Results Series has been the definitive resource for practical everyday management. Implementing for Results is the latest addition to the series and starts where Strategic Planning for Results ended. In Implementing for Results, you will find:
· Tips to help determine which activities effectively support your goals and objectives
· Fourteen easy to follow tasks, presented in order
· The tools needed for staff to prepare and effectively communicate change
· All the necessary tools for reviewing current and potential library activities
Cheryl Bryan. Managing Facilities for Results Workforms: Optimizing Space for Services. American Library Association, 2004.
Carving out new service areas within existing space, forgoing massive additions or expensive new buildings, offers a cost-effective solution for budget-conscious libraries. Building from the proven Results Series model, this volume dovetails with the basics outlined in The New Planning for Results: A Streamlined Approach.
Sandra Nelson, Ellen Altman, and Diane Mayo. Managing for Results: Effective Resource Allocation for Public Libraries. American Library Association, 2000.
Every public library, regardless of size, has four important resources to help meet its mission and achieve its goals in the community. Staff, the library's collection, technology, and the library facility itself all need to be carefully managed for the library to achieve the results outlined in its strategic plan. Managing for Results helps librarians to take a proactive approach to marshaling and managing all of the library's resources effectively.
Sandra Nelson. The New Planning for Results: A Streamlined Approach. American Library Association, 2001.
The New Planning for Results is an all-in-one guide that outlines a tested, results-driven planning process designed to enable libraries to respond effectively to rapid change. The book includes case studies, work forms, and a new toolkit to provide library staff with all of the tools they need to complete a successful strategic plan in less than five months.
This book has been replaced by Strategic Planning for Results.
Diane Mayo and Jeanne Goodrich. Staffing for Results: A Guide to Working Smarter. American Library Association, 2002.
How long does it take to . . . catalog a book? Staffing for Results will help you to answer this question and others you have related to the output and performance of your staff. By analyzing, in a systematic way, how long work activities take and then assigning steps to each unit of work, you will have a quantifiable measure of the output of your staff. The only book of its kind, Staffing for Results equips you to not only gauge performance and output but also build on what you learn to maximize and even increase productivity. Using common public library tasks as the context, Staffing for Results walks you through the process of measuring work, identifying best practices, assigning costs to each activity, analyzing resource allocation, and communicating results.
Sandra Nelson. Strategic Planning for Results. American Library Association, 2008.
The PLA Results Series has long served to help public librarians envision, evaluate, and respond to community needs with distinctive programs and services. Building from this proven model, Strategic Planning for Results is the fully revised version of Planning for Results, the foundational book in this groundbreaking series.
Diane Mayo. Technology for Results: Developing Service-Based Plans. American Library Association, 2005.
Professional librarian and library automation expert Diane Mayo shows librarians how to create a dynamic technology plan that will allocate resources to support library priorities and manage technology services based on community goals. And with the help of sixteen workforms, librarians can customize the planning process to sustain effective technology programs while expanding and adding where needed.
Glossary of terms used in the Results books
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Updated: 04/14/2010
