Inventing a New Future
DLS Strategic Plan: FY2009-FY2011
Mission Statement
The DuPage Library System has a mission to promote, facilitate, and develop excellence in library services.
Planning Philosophy
DLS starts with the needs of its member libraries, assisting them in providing excellent library services.
DLS is unique—as a geographically small system that can be nimble, enabling it to more easily experiment with services, take risks, provide flexible services and responsiveness, and find ways to say "yes."
DLS Members Want
A system that:- provides leadership—the system should be proactive, aggressive, knowledgeable, and a good role model that presents itself professionally,
- has a member service-centric model,
- serves as a vehicle for sharing information and resources,
- employs staff who understand the environment of every type of library
- provides tools for libraries to improve their services,
- communicates its activities, including workshops and other pertinent events,
- involves member libraries when setting priorities and making decisions that affect the entire system,
- expands its reach both physical and virtually,
- is a technological presence in the library community, employing current web technologies for communication, continuous learning opportunities, and interactivity,
- facilitates coaching and mentoring,
- helps mediate conflict between member libraries, and
- promotes cooperative activities.
Issues Facing Libraries
The Virtual World- The library website serves as a branch library.
- Communication needs to be managed.
- Participation through technology, such as blogs, wikis, etc., is increasingly important.
- Intellectual capital needs to be captured and managed.
- Information literacy and identification of authoritative sources of information are vital services that set librarianship apart.
- More visibility on search engines such as Google is desired so that when a member of the public searches a term related to libraries, libraries will be higher up on the results lists.
- Continually changing content is needed to keep target audiences returning to the website.
- Demographics are changing and there is greater cultural diversity—age, language, ethnic groups, race, multicultural education, unserved, and people with disabilities.
- Environmental awareness is greater and of growing importance.
- Energy costs are skyrocketing impacting many different costs.
- Finding and keeping excellent staff with the skills that meet the needs of member libraries is a challenge.
- Libraries need assistance locating and working with consulting services.
- Advocacy remains important.
- Marketing is becoming increasingly important.
- The power of a library card needs to be emphasized.
- Use of buzz marketing (passing of information, especially recommendations, from person-to-person) is growing.
- Space planning has become more important as libraries are unable to build a new building in the current economic climate and want to rethink the use of existing space.
- Passing referenda is increasingly challenging in this tax conscious atmosphere.
- Assistance with long term financial planning is needed.
- Corporate funding, grants, resources, partnerships, and other potential revenue sources need to be explored.
