Strategic Planning and Management for Library Managers (review)

In the introduction to Strategic Planning and Management for Library Managers, Joseph R. Matthews, an information technology and strategic planning consultant, observes that there has been a lack of attention to strategic planning in the library literature in recent years. He argues that our rapidly changing information, social, and economic environments necessitate fresh thinking and a continuous reexamination of our roles and priorities. To that end, Matthews offers us both a text and a toolkit on strategic planning in this single slim volume.

Strategic Planning and Management for Library Managers is a comprehensive overview of the art and science of strategic planning as well as a practical guide to the development and implementation of the plan itself. The work is organized into three sections: What a strategy is and the need for strategies; the value of and available options for strategic planning; and the need to monitor and update strategies. Appendices provide sample strategic plans. The writing style is straightforward and concise. Much of the information is presented in numbered or bulleted lists and accompanied by relevant quotes, sidebars, and graphics.

Matthews starts the work most appropriately with a focus on the strategies rather than on the plan. All too often in libraries we hear the familiar complaint that library staff and administration invest hours of time and considerable effort to produce a plan and print it or mount it on the Web, only to have it ultimately collect physical or virtual dust. By focusing on the strategies and elaborating on various definitions, contexts, purposes, and limitations of strategies, Matthews puts the attention where it belongs—not on the plan as product and an end in itself but rather on the plan as a vehicle for establishing, communicating, and continuously monitoring and updating a library's mission, vision, and strategic direction.

With this focus in mind, perhaps the most useful and interesting chapter in the strategies section, particularly for library school students or librarians new to strategic planning, is a summary of 10 "schools of strategic thought" categorized as either prescriptive, descriptive, or integrative in their approach with a brief assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. Following the strategies discussion, Matthews goes on to cover various approaches to the planning process including implementation. The book concludes with a chapter entitled "Tools of Managing the Library" that includes discussions of benchmarking, balanced scorecard, performance measures, and other tools and techniques for ongoing assessment.

As suggested above, Strategic Planning and Management for Library Managers is a good primer for individuals new to the process such as members of a library strategic planning team. Using it with such a group would provide a shared basic understanding of the background, purpose, and process of strategic planning. For more experienced administrators, there is not much new here. While Matthews notes the relative lack of books specific to libraries and strategic planning, there certainly is no lack of tomes on strategic planning in publication. Seasoned library administrators who practice strategic planning and want to keep up with the latest will gain more from the voluminous business, leadership, and higher education literature on new developments in change management, planning, assessment, and organizational effectiveness. Nevertheless, Matthews brings a lot of information together in a single well-organized volume that is of benefit to the novice strategic planner.