Apply the fundamental principles of planning, management, marketing, and advocacy.
Libraries do not exist in a vacuum. While the vast quantity of resources and tools that they possess are available freely to the public, both in virtual and physical formats, that doesn’t do any good if those resources are not intelligently selected, if the community is not appropriately informed of their existence, if the library is not set up as a welcoming environment, or if the library is not able to argue for its own existence and resources. To these ends, planning, management, marketing, and advocacy are important attributes to consider when running a library.
Planning is a vague term, but that ambiguity serves it well in the context of libraries. The information professions require different plans to be set forth, both in terms of collection and the organization as a whole. For the actual materials that are held in the library, planning means analyzing local user trends and curating the collection. It can also encompass how the library adapts to the push for more digitized items (Levy & Marshall, 1995). By keeping abreast of new developments, and how we will be able to adopt them in our own branches, our libraries can stay current and up-to-date. Planning can also be used to determine the direction that the library plans to go as a whole. While organizations such as the ALA offer overall guidelines (ALA Code of Ethics, n.d.), individual library systems may have their own more focused needs as well. These foci may address issues specific to their communities, or governmental mandates, like the Californian requirement that public libraries must provide library cards to all third graders in the state (Student Success Cards for All, 2024). Overall, planning is a crucial part of library work, that defines not only the future of the branch’s collection, but the future of the branch itself.
Similarly to planning, management is a term that can encompass a wide variety of meanings. For libraries, I believe that management best refers to developing policy that guides interactions with staff and patrons alike. Strong management skills are important to develop for library environments. Whether maintaining order at storytimes, or directing coworkers to the highest priority tasks, library leadership goes hand in hand with a high level of responsibility. However, good library management also involves establishing an appropriate set of regulations for patrons. Here too, the ALA has provided recommendations (Guidelines for the Development of Polices and Procedures, n.d.), but the overall goal is for library users to be able to use the library freely – so long as their use does not negatively impact the ability of others to use the space.
Marketing may seem like a strange topic to discuss when analyzing a free institution such as the library, but in reality, marketing is even more important. Outside groups are critical to library success – as those who are unaware of a library’s resources will not be able to use them. To this end, libraries must reach out to schools, community centers, and even local businesses. School visits and swag giveaways can attract younger patrons and their parents, and partnering with community centers spreads the word of what the library has to offer. Finally, libraries can market themselves through digital means. Special collections, which often host unique or difficult-to-access items, have found especially high levels of success with reaching out to their patrons via the Internet (Duesing & Near, 2004). Tailoring programming and other events to suit the interests and needs of the community ensures that marketing pays off – that once people come in to visit the library, that they will return in the future.
The practice of advocacy is one that is essential to the administrative side of library work. Promoting the profession to those who are interested in working in information science draws talented individuals to library branches, and recruiting volunteers is a fantastic way to ensure that material, resources, and other offerings continue to circulate. However, keeping an eye on how federal organizations are seeking to treat libraries is just as important. The ALA advises that libraries think of themselves as an ecosystem, a network of branches that are all engaged in mutual cooperation. When one falters, the whole is diminished - but when one succeeds, the benefits are shared by all (Wood, 2024). This means that if one branch is lacking in its ability to challenge an anti-access bill or other discriminatory legislature, we have to be ready to help advocate for them. Promoting open lines of communication, representative library leadership, and mechanisms to sustain such ecosystems are therefore the keys to effective advocacy (Wood, 2024). By drilling down on the skills that libraries employ to lend their collections, they can lend their efforts to their fellow branches in a similarly successful manner.
Throughout my coursework and career, I have been able to practice increasingly higher levels of planning, management, marketing, and advocacy. In terms of my career, I started out as an Aide, and rarely was stationed at the front desk. However, as I continued to progress upwards through the library system, I found myself gaining increased levels of responsibility – and with it, the ability to affect greater change. In order to expand the library’s influence and market the branch as a Library Assistant, I participated in career fairs, was a special guest for themed community storytimes, and organized school trips – where students could go home with their own library card at the end of it. Additionally, I have planned and executed my own programming, including large summer reading parties that involved local caterers, presenters, and live animals.
Furthermore, in terms of my studies, I have been able to refine my techniques. Several of my classes have focused on planning collection development and multi-year strategic plans. I have also educated myself on key strategies that assist me with managing the expectations of my staff and patrons. I believe that through my work, both within this degree and outside of it, I have been able to truly apply these principles.
In order to demonstrate my ability to apply principles of planning, marketing, management, and advocacy, I have compiled the following documents. I believe that they specifically exemplify my ability to plan for the future, both on the organization and collection level, as well as display how I can manage a space with straightforward and reasonable expectations. The first of these is a collection development plan graphic that I created in INFO 266: Collection Management. This assignment followed an analysis of a branch’s collection as is, and challenged us to create a plan that would improve the collection overall and justify our reasoning. In order to complete this assignment, I had to consider not only the desires of the library community, but also the financial means available to us. The second document attests to my ability to manage a space. I have been conducting storytimes since 2022, but a large part of that is crowd work. When I took INFO 281: Early Literacy Storytime, I sharpened the skills that I had been developing to hold the interest of children and adults alike, and effectively manage my audience. The last document that I have provided was a group effort. In INFO 204, Information Professions, my group was tasked with creating a five-years strategic plan for a GLAM. We selected the Oakland Zoo, and this final project is the culmination of our research and efforts to project how an organization could continue to survive and thrive into the future.
This document was created after an initial analysis was performed on the Crockett Public Library in Contra Costa County. Seven areas of interest were distinguished, as they had particular relevance to a common demographic that attended the library, or set aside this specific branch as unique. For this project, we were assigned a budget of $1400. After defining the collection development goals as purchasing more licenses to virtual materials, refreshing the general collection, and finally focusing on the seven specific sections, I determined how to divide this funding. Some collections I deemed in need of expansion, such as the Coming-of-Age graphic novels, while others I thought should be curated, but maintained at their current size, like the reference collection on the Carquinez Bridge. Finally, in a short essay, I explained my reasoning before placing the results of my planning into a graphic.
Storytime can be a chaotic endeavor. The programming that I normally put on is designed for preschoolers, who have high levels of energy, and are very easily distracted from a simple presentation. Furthermore, adults can get distracted too, sitting on their phones and treated the event in a daycare capacity. While I had previously developed tools to help me manage and navigate the landscape of storytime, when I took INFO 281, I added more equipment to my arsenal. By specifically setting aside time to discuss the rules and expectations at the beginning of such an event, all participants, both children and adults, know what to expect, and are more able to comply with the rules of the space. In this assignment, I developed rules that focused on some of the most important issues that I had seen arise during storytime: food, general respect, and adult behavior. Food is not allowed in the library, with the exception of specific lunch programs, and drinks must be in covered containers. This allows me to separate snacktime from library time, and keep the branch cleaner and our books in better condition. The Golden Rule is generally the standard for inter-child interactions at storytime, and I let parents and caregivers know that I will be relying on them to ensure that their little ones comply. Finally, by informing adults that their children will be more engaged if they participate too, I can get the entire crowd involved! By addressing these potential concerns at the beginning of each storytime, I am better able to manage the expectations of the patrons, as well as the expectations of the space that the library provides.
As stated above, this project was the final product created over the course of a semester’s worth of work. My groupmates and I, after selecting the Oakland Zoo as our GLAM of choice, created a five-year strategic plan that would allow the Zoo to overcome existing and potential difficulties, expand its revenue base, and partner with local organizations and communities to draw more attention and interest. This report goes into depth about the background of the Zoo, and therefore its inherent strengths. It identifies key shareholders and existing partners, which gave us a sense of the type of organizations that might seek to work more with the Zoo in the future. By conducting an Environmental Scan Synthesis, we were able to single out specific trends that we should be aware of, both positive and negative. Finally, our strategic plan concluded with a trio of main goals, complete with sub-objectives and performance measures that we could use to monitor our progress. I believe strongly that when called to create a strategic plan for any other information-distributing organization, this assignment will have adequately prepared me to create a comprehensive plan.
Throughout my coursework and personal work experience, I have been able to truly develop my skills in marketing, planning, advocacy, and management. However, I know that there is always more to learn, and I look forward to accepting training opportunities at work, as well as investigating ways outside of my career to improve my skills. Regardless, I believe that the evidence I have assembled has equipped me to ensure that my library work establishes positive lines of communication with the community, draws uncertain individuals into learning experiences at the library, ensures that the branch persists as a champion of access and equity, and uplifts underrepresented voices for the good of all.
ALA Code of Ethics. (n.d.). Retrieved February 9, 2025, from https://www.ala.org/tools/ethics
Alvino Wood, J. (2024). Library Advocacy: Ecosystem Concepts Can Provide a Strong Foundation for Library Advocacy. Maine Policy Review, 33(2). https://doi.org/10.53558/elik4443
Duesing, A., & Near, K. (2004). Helping Consumers Find Reliable Health Information on the Internet: An Overview of One Library’s Outreach Projects in Virginia. Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, 8(3), 53–67. https://doi-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/10.1300/J381v08n03_04
Guidelines for the Development of Policies and Procedures Regarding User Behavior and Library Usage. (n.d.). Retrieved February 21, 2025, from https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/guidelinesdevelopment
Levy, D., & Marshall, C. (1995). Going digital: a look at assumptions underlying digital libraries. In Communications of the ACM (Vol. 38, Issue 4, pp. 77–84). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/205323.205346
Student Success Cards for All. (2024, May 7). California State Library. https://www.library.ca.gov/services/to-libraries/success-cards/