ALA Members

Strategic Framework

     Strategic Initiatives

          Advocacy

          Information Policy

          Professional and Leadership Development

     Enabling Strategies

Enabling Strategies:

• Create an assessment and evaluation process to measure the effect of the strategic initiatives.


• Review governance structure (including committees and round tables) to identify changes to address the strategic initiatives.


• Review staff structure and compensation to ensure focus on strategic initiatives.


• Build a more robust public communication and public relations/marketing capacity.


• Identify revenue streams and fundraising opportunities to support the strategic initiatives.


• Engage division leaders and staff to define their role and contribution to the strategic initiatives.


• Build a sustainable technological infrastructure that enables ALA to advance the strategic initiatives.


• Align ALA publishing and conferences to support the strategic initiatives.


• Strengthen pathways for member involvement/engagement in strategic initiatives.

Perhaps include ways to simplify the governance processes and organization to make it easier for members to navigate.

Connie Williams

Thanks, Connie.  Are there particular aspects of governance or organization that we might make "easier to navigate" or particular areas where you recommend change?

As part of "Create an assessment and evaluation process to measure the effect of the strategic initiatives," I'd like to see a systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of Resolutions passed by Council. We spend a lot of time crafting them and so it seems like it would be worthwhile to set up a process to evaluate them. I had started a thread on this subject at http://connect.ala.org/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=ea2a65e1-7b28-43f8-9cf8-973622bd6ffe, but think the discussion probably more properly belongs here. 

Part of the evaluation process for ALA efforts will include what we mean by success. For a Council resolution, I'd like to suggest that any of the following could represent success:

• A policy change happens that can be attributed to a resolution.
• There is a visible raising of awareness of an issue among the general public.
• Resolutions are referred to outside of library literature
• A certain percentage of ALA members take some sort of action based on a Council resolution

I think these types of measures of success could be applicable to a number of ALA initiatives, although in some cases measurements would be difficult. 

Thanks for starting the conversation and giving us threads.