Developing a Library Technology Plan, Part 2

Installment 2 from my four week course on Developing a Library Technology Plan. The course is going to be offered again starting in July 10, 2007. If you are interested in attending, go to this Infopeople page.

Supporting the Strategic Plan
The primary planning document for any library is the strategic plan. Therefore, to be a good management tool, the technology plan complements and builds upon the strategic plan (or some other planning document that specifies the library's service goals).

This kind of technology planning requires the cooperation of the Information Technology (IT) department because of their technology expertise, as well as administrators (who are responsible for establishing service goals) and public service staff (who are responsible for actually delivering the services).

The best technology plans are explicitly tied to the library's service goals to ensure that no technology is being supported that doesn’t have a direct connection to the library's strategic plan.

When we talk about service goals, we are talking about our library users. Service is provided to the user. It is the library user's experience that is used to measure the library's success. Even infrastructure improvements go back to the user experience. Stable networks, fast Internet connections, excellent computer support: these all improve the user experience in the library by keeping operations running smoothly and ensuring that resources are readily available. As much as possible, the user experience should always be expressed when stating service goals.

In addition to tying the technology activities to specific service goals, the technology plan should provide some indication of when these activities are expected to commence. The goals and activities support the goals should be stated in such a way as to make it easy to determine if the activities were accomplished as planned or not.

Sample excerpt from technology plan's Supporting the Strategic Plan section:

Strategic Plan Goal: Increase availability of library resources to online customers.

1. Add international newspapers to virtual library by November 2007
2. Add e-book selections to virtual library by Februrary 2008
3. Add anonymous chat option for providing online reference services by December 2007