Strategic Plans and National Libraries: Planning within a Changing Context

This article examines the relationships between strategic planning, national libraries and changing contexts. It does this by surveying the experiences of 14 national libraries in developing and using strategic planning and identifies key factors which enable sustainable strategic planning within a changing context. It proposes an approach to strategic planning based upon the five Is model: impact, inclusiveness, integration, innovation and imagination and suggests how this model could be embedded into organizational cultures. The research has four principal conclusions: that the challenges to libraries posed by the digital revolution are too complex to be faced in isolation and that collaboration within and without the sector is essential; that engagement, with new technologies, ways of presenting information and stakeholders is necessary; that innovation and learning must be embedded into organizational cultures and that organizations should be led by committed, engaged and motivated leadership. These key issues are necessary to enable libraries to be able to adapt, facilitate and manage change and to ensure continuing visibility and relevance in a changing world.