Strategic Plan - Goal 1

 

7-12-2024

This week marks the end of the Strategic Plan writing process. Thank you to Molly McCormack Moody and Lloyd Sineni for joining Lisa Gitz and I for many, many meetings beginning in November. As a committee we focused on responses to the Community Survey from February and created three goals. Today I’ll focus on the first one.

Goal 1 reads, “Expand communication with area residents and organizations in order to strengthen relationships and promote library service.” Essentially that translates into finding effective ways to communicate what is happening at the library. In April I wrote an article that detailed the survey responses regarding how people learn about library programs. There was a decided split between social media for nonusers and library signage and the newspaper for user.

Many of the real actions laid out for this goal are ways to diversify delivery with a minimum of effort. Meaning, add an Instagram account which can be managed from the same interface used for our Facebook posts. Same amount of work as long as images are created to fit Instagram. Continue to make newspaper articles available through the library’s website only do so through a blog that can be shared on Facebook. The advantage of that is the ability for readers to easily go back to earlier articles they may have missed or wish to reference for some reason. I actually did just that to identify when a previous article referenced social media and the Community Survey. For accountability purposes, it is easy to see the number of views for each article through the blog and watch them go up from week to week.

There are two other delivery platforms identified in the goal: the website and a community calendar.

Shortly after we launched our redesigned website, the Department of Justice/Office of Civil Rights released a ruling regarding accessibility requirements pertaining to government related websites. Our switch to a focus on graphics means we are in trouble on that score. The images contain the necessary information about our programming. However, they can’t be read by screen readers. Reaching compliance won’t require another redesign, but it will mean learning our way around alt text and finding a balance between that and less reliance on graphics.

The community calendar idea was born from meetings Molly McCormack Moody has attended in the past and scheduling conflicts the library has had with other community organizations. We would love for East Troy community to have a one-stop place to go to find dates and times of community events. The Chamber sends out regular emails in the summer, but the content is limited to events sponsored by the Chamber or its members. The Family Resource Center has a website. The ETLPL has a website. The East Troy Intergenerational Community Center has a website. I would love for the Lions to have a website.

The library would like to create a simple Google calendar with events for all of these organizations along with others I haven’t named. We can all make it available on our websites. That sounds like a summer programming is over project to me. If you or someone you know works with a community organization and is interested in learning more, reach out to me at the library. Those are the people we’ll start with in the fall.

Reading Now: There, There by Tommy Orange, Twilight Territory by Andrew X Pham ( Big Library Read on Libby)

Listening to Now: Hidden on the Fens by Joy Ellis (Back to DI Nikki Galena Bk 11)