How academic librarians can use strategic planning to align with university goals

To support Polish library leaders in making academic libraries and their services more visible, Elsevier organized a special workshop at our Annual Conference, Open Science: Practice and Perspectives, where we gleaned some inspiring, low-cost tactics that librarians can put into practice to widen the reach and improve alignment with their institution.

Establishing the “why”

Library visibility is critical to ensuring its success and growth. In my experience, and in speaking with colleagues (Polish academic library directors) at the workshop, we identified the main areas of concern that are critical if libraries are to align their outreach and goals to the goals of the university’s strategic plan. It’s all about visibility.

Deputy Director of the Adam Mickiewicz University Library and workshop participant, Małgorzata Rychlik identified two main reasons why academic libraries should work harder to increase their visibility: “The first is of a pragmatic nature — a visible library is one that finds it easier to obtain funding for its activities, because the university's leaders see the library as a partner. The second aspect touches on values and revolves around the library's mission. A library that is recognized and therefore visible in its environment can fulfil this service much more effectively.

Libraries are not isolated islands, so it is important to understand the role of the library and consider it in the wider context of campus goals and priorities. Michael Levine-Clark, Dean of University of Denver Libraries, who acted as guest trainer during the workshop, emphasized “demonstrating the library as partner in serving the needs of the institution, and in solving difficult problems, means that the library will always be part of important conversations, and the library will get the resources and support it needs.”

Define your university’s strategic plan, goals and priorities

“It’s necessary to learn about your university’s goals. Universities are moving in many directions at once, with dynamically changing needs, so it’s important to keep up with them.” states Dr. Katarzyna Weinper, Director of the Centre of Scientific and Technical Information at Lublin University of Technology, “knowing the ‘real’ goals allows libraries to find areas/niches and even create collections in common within overall goals. This kind of collaboration can dramatically strengthen the relationship between the university and the library.”

Defining and aligning the libraries objectives to the university can be broken down into three actions: locate, analyze and connect.

1. Locate strategic plans

Find the publicly stated and written priorities as well as the non-public statements. Workshop moderator, Michael Levine-Clark makes clear that, “it’s also necessary to find out more about goals that are less public and those that may be hidden in internal memos or discussed in administrative meetings.” Make sure to ask questions at internal meetings focused on goals and priorities to fully understand these ideas.

2. Align the objectives

Now find common ground between the institutional strategic goals and the library’s objectives. Michael Levine-Clark notes, “It’s integral that you ask whether those goals and priorities align with the library mission, with librarian skills and values and then offer to help.”

3. Connect institutional priorities to library objectives

Beyond aligning institutional goals to the library’s goals, aim the connect these objectives to specific projects that will further the work. Answer the big question: how can the library help? “As an example,” Levine-Clark says, “an overall initiative to increase university rankings might have a public relations component that pushes for greater faculty visibility. Better metadata about faculty authored publications would be a key element of such an initiative, and the library is perfectly positioned to help.”

Witold Kozakiewicz, Director of the Information and Library Centre at the Medical University of Lodz, points out that the library can even align itself to provide support to the institution when constructing the strategic plan: “The key to success is good information, and the place where there are specialists in data collection, information management and knowledge is the library. Our information and library systems can enable efficient evaluation of scientific activities, employees and units, and can be used for planning the strategy of scientific development of the university, building personnel policy or employee evaluation.”

Guidance from the workshop

After our discussion on the importance of aligning the academic library’s goals and objectives with the defined goals, strategies, and plans of the university’s, we compiled a list of tips for guiding other librarians:

• Focus on areas where the library can demonstrate impact: University goals are often different than library goals and the library won’t be able to address all strategic goals — instead, put resources to demonstrating impact on the “big picture”

• Being open minded about projects can create more opportunity, so cooperation with key university personnel can advance library goals for long-term success

The role of the academic library cannot be overstated as an integral part of not only a university environment, but also the community at large. This workshop covered tactics on how to make this happen, but the overall goal of the exercises covered was to promote the immeasurable value of librarians and the institutions they support.

What's next? How do you begin to build the library's visibility and impact in this wider context? Who to connect with, who to collaborate with and who to work with on next steps? Stay tuned for Part 2: Defining University Stakeholders and Establish Meaningful Relationships.