An Approach to Strategic Planning and Strategy Management at National Libraries

The paper considers how national libraries, faced with the new opportunities for access to information provided by the Internet, are having to reassess the audiences they are serving and the way in which they serve those audiences. The historical role of national libraries is being challenged by both new and traditional users who have expectations of fast access to information in their own homes and workplaces. In addition, governments worldwide are under severe financial pressures and expect there to be clear demonstrable returns from the institutions they fund. At the same time, the growth of digital material poses a significant challenge for collection policies. The paper argues that national libraries must set strategic directions that take account of this changing environment, and suggests that seeing strategic development in terms of a series of strategy waves can aid understanding of where resources are being allocated. The author describes the ‘value innovation’ approach to assessing how well an organization matches its capabilities and performance against the needs of its chosen user groups. The importance of developing key performance indicators is stressed, and the use of the ‘balanced scorecard’ methodology for managing strategy implementation is described.