LIS 5023 Management in Information Organizations 

I included my strategic plan for the Mustang Public Library for 2022-2024 as my artifact for the LIS 5023 - Management in Information Organization course. The reason I chose this artifact was for the fact that this document taught me a lot about how strategic planning is done in libraries. The assignment was to create a new strategic plan for a library for the next two years. Since the Mustang Library already had a strategic plan in place, I needed to adapt it and improve upon it to make it for the next two years.

I have had to do strategic planning multiple times in my previous career, but working on this document helped shift my perspectives and apply some of the lessons I learned in other industries. The biggest thing I learned from this experience was how to analyze a community. Initially, I thought the main numbers to look at in a community were demographic figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Community Profile & Business Guide was invaluable when building a community profile and needs assessment. 

I had multiple management courses and have been a manager before. My biggest takeaway was the standards used to measure the community, and next was how frequently strategic plans should be updated. Then learning the hierarchy of library management was also extremely useful. The course provides good insights into management and dealing with challenges I have faced, such as budget cuts. This artifact also helped me see how information professionals will face challenges and how we must justify every expense as information professionals in the public sector, which ties into SLIS SLO 2, Intellectual Skill (2022). This class also taught me the process of strategic planning and how to seek relevant information to complete the task. This artifact ties into SLIS SLO 1, Section 1.2.3, and SLO 3, Professional and Scholarly Communication. I learned how to properly apply the principles of gathering data and analyzing the community to assess its needs into a professional document for the relevant professional organization. The project also ties into my personal learning goals of learning the ALA Core Competences (2023), specifically in Gateway Knowledge and  Management and Administration. This assignment helped me learn how to look at the resources available for assessing the needs of a community and how to effectively create a strategic plan for a library using concepts of leadership methods. Also, in interviews with the librarians at the Mustang Public Library, I increased my professional network.

Reference

American Library Association. (2023). 2022 ALA core competences of librarianship_final. In American Library Association. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.ala.org/educationcareers/sites/ala.org.educationcareers/files/content/2022%20ALA%20Core%20Competences%20of%20Librarianship_FINAL.pdf

School of Library and Information Studies. (2022, October 10). Goals and student learning outcomes. The University of Oklahoma. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.ou.edu/cas/slis/about/vision