Apply the fundamental principles of planning, management, marketing, and advocacy

Introduction

To best serve their diverse users’ and staffs’ evolving needs, information professionals (IP) must dedicate themselves to properly managing their organizations. To explain this, I will examine how four information organizations approach one each of the fundamental management principles: planning, budgeting, advocacy, and marketing.

To plan for uncertain futures, non-profit organizations require regular environmental scans through PESTEL sectors: political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal. More than identifying risk-developing circumstances, IPs should also scan for potential avenues of aid or protection.

Schools of higher education endure budget constraints that can become crippling if not managed carefully. To provide faculty and administration with enough resources to meet their students’ changing needs, IPs should regard what can and cannot be cut when evaluating a school’s finances.

Public school library systems are perpetually underfunded. To keep them running, IPs must advocate for more stable funding and community involvement.

Communities are often unaware of what services their local libraries offer. To solve this, IPs should create marketing materials that remind patrons public libraries are there for their needs.

Planning

Environmental scans using PESTEL sectors are crucial to planning an information organization’s beginning and development into entities that can serve their users’ needs. Without considering how these factors can influence operations, from day-to-day to long-term, organizations can stall over minor issues that become major through neglect or by bypassing growth opportunities.

Because IPs understand how information can be searched, received, and implemented, it is their responsibility to perform environmental scans and apply the details gathered into their organizations’ missions, policies, budget, and other practical considerations.

Budget

An institution can have the most blessed endowment and/or generous donors but may still fail to build environments that meet their staff and users’ needs if they cannot budget those resources properly. According to ALA’s “Making Budget Presentations” (ALA, n.d.), needs assessments to determine spending can be part of strategic planning, but should also be done routinely, presumably by others not of any executive committees.

To keep their organizations relevant, IPs must consider and prioritize personnel and user needs when drafting budgets according to available resources.

Advocacy

Public schools are frequently underfunded, which means their libraries also struggle to develop with their users’ academic needs. Government and community aid can be found, but because of competition with other departments –like athletics, performing and visual arts, or site maintenance- and schools in the district, public school library systems have to aggressively assert the validity of their services.

More than planning or budgeting, advocating for their organizations just to keep running can weigh the heaviest on IPs. Fortunately, a job well done by this principle can mean the difference between shutting down or resources gathered enough for years of development.

Marketing

Growing up an immigrant, I still have trouble with bits of American-English, despite achieving fluency by age seven. This baffles my associates, and in college one of them asked why I did not participate in a public library youth reading group, or at least a story-time hour. Three decades ago, my public library was renowned for their bilingual programs, particularly for my first language, Cantonese. So how had they passed me by despite my weekly visits, between the ages of five to 15, to two separate branches?

No matter how well a library is planned, budgeted, or advocated for, it can still fail if services are not marketed well to users.

Evidence

INFO 204 – Information Professions – Environmental Scan: Youth Programs

I executed an environmental scan on a youth programs organization for INFO 204, Information Professions. A non-profit organization offering programs and services to underprivileged youth since 1967, it has faced both opposition and support while becoming the far-reaching San Francisco Bay Area institution it is today. It takes watching around many corners to plan enough ahead for such a multi-faceted organization to survive.

My scan inferred in order of the PESTEL sectors that the organization can:

• check for Political opposition and assistance in City Hall Records, shelters and soup kitchens, the SFPL, and neighborhood watch online forums.
• review the Bay Area’s Economic history, food donation programs, and hospital expense reports.
• canvas neighborhoods where the organization’s services are available, and research census data and school district records to determine possible Social barriers.
• advertise services on social media, and create programs to loan information Technology-capable electronics to further gauge user needs.
• interview the Department of Human Services on regional health for Environmental concerns.
• survey laws for Legal roadblocks that may affect how youth and the homeless access social services.

This scan is evidence I understand the appropriate consideration and research required to plan for the continued viability, success, and development of a non-profit organization.

INFO 204 – Information Professionals – Budget Cuts: an Arts Institute

I calculated a financial breakdown for an Arts Institute’s 2017-2018 school year for INFO 204, Information Professions. I was assigned to examine the art university’s expected income and expenses, then cut 5% off the budget. I also reviewed the school’s financial report for that year, noting how it had adhered to what Jones (2018) would consider a near-equal split between special purpose and supplemental funding.

Assessing the Institute’s needs and priorities, I decided financial aid was most important to students living in one of the most expensive cities in the country (Hoffower, 2019), and could not lower the amount awarded in scholarships. Then teachers must be paid well, with at least a bit held over for raises next year, so also no change to instructional expenses. Institutional support can take a small hit, for example for personnel or programs no longer making a return on investment (ROI). Remaining sections were given similar treatment.

This financial breakdown is evidence I understand how budget cuts can affect the way a university is managed, but that the cuts can happen so the needs of staff and students are still met.

INFO 204 – Information Professionals – Economical Sector analysis for a public school district’s library system

I did this economical sector analysis as part of a group report for INFO 204, Information Professionals. Declaring that the public school district’s library system needed to receive more funding, I used the 2012 Pennsylvania School Library Project (Lance & Schwarz, 2012) and 2014 Washington State School Library (Coker, 2015) survey to emphasize how more money spent on library improvements resulted in higher standardized test scores.

Then I argued how, facing the immediate consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, librarians of the library system must be supported to provide more than a minimal level of library services. Children quarantined at home away from their friends, from their former weekly routines will need to learn why everything had to change (Bamberger et al., 2020) and also get information technology-related help for remote learning. I concluded with mentioning a corporation’s and a CEO’s contribution to support African American achievement and development of Computer Science education.

This analysis is evidence that –in seeing the frustration, and often sheer desperation public school librarians must feel- I understand how much they advocate for their libraries affect how well they can manage offering services year by year.

INFO 210 – Reference and Information Services – Social Outreach Artifact and Reflections

I created this infographic for INFO 210, Reference and Information Services, to promote a program I had created in INFO 287, the Hyperlinked Library (SEE: Competency A essay). The design and copywriting choices were made to convince would-be participants that the program, The Power of Stories, could reacquaint them with their communities while soothing each other’s collective traumas. I had also intended for users, after sharing their thoughts, to approach librarians with reference and reader advisory inquiries concerning the past years’ tragedies and triumphs.

I kept my design choices simple in order to easily scale between webpage and paper fliers, and in shades of blue to put viewers at ease. Each panel began with a compassionate message and used words that promoted goodwill and self-love. The language was kept simple to accommodate diverse comprehension levels.

This infographic and accompanying reflections are evidence I understand the importance of strong and clear marketing for public library services.

Conclusion

Information professionals should manage their organizations in ways that best serve their users’ and colleague’s needs. Each fundamental management principle –planning, budgeting, advocacy, and marketing- have their place in this process. While some may seem more crucial than the others depending on available resources, IPs can fulfill each mindfully by considering their organizations are like real people: in order to live well, each person should plan ahead, budget prudently, stand up for themselves, and be proud of what they bring to the table. To continue this practice in my own professional career, I will check in with a therapist every year, while volunteering my IP expertise to public libraries, schools, and other non-profit organizations for their programming, advocacy, and/or marketing needs.

References

American Library Association. (n.d.). Making budget presentations. Retrieved October 19, 2020, from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/making-a-budget-presentation

Hoffower, H. (2019, December 11). 13 mind-blowing facts that show just how expensive San Francisco really is. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francisco-mind-blowing-facts-2019-5

Jones, S. F. (2018). Managing Budgets. In Hirsh, S. (Ed.), Information services today: an introduction (2^nd ed., pp. 256-265). Rowman and Littlefield.

Bamberger, C., Bryan, C., Campbell, J., & Schultz, A. (2020, July 1). As COVID-19 budget cuts loom, relevance of school librarians put to the test. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/07/01/as-covid-19-budget-cuts-loom-relevance-of.html

Coker, E. (2015, April). The Washington state school library impact study: Certified teacher-librarians, library quality and student achievement in Washington state public schools. Washington Library Association. https://wala.memberclicks.net/assets/WLMA/Advocacy/wsslit%20exec%20summary%204.7.15.pdf.

Lance, K. C., & Schwarz, B. (2012, October). How Pennsylvania school libraries pay off: Investments in student achievement and academic standards. Pennsylvania School Library Project.

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