planning Strategic with multitype libraries in the community: a model with extra funding as the main goal
By Carole Francq Gall, M.L.S., AHIP Director of Collection Management
Ruth Lilly Medical Library Indiana University School of Medicine 975 West Walnut Street IB-100 Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-5121
[e-mail]
Ellen G. Miller, M.S. President
Ellen Miller Group 8128 Westgate Drive Lenexa, Kansas 66215
[e-mail]
Medical libraries are discovering that ongoing collaboration in fundraising with other types of community libraries is mutually beneficial. Such partnerships may lead to joint grants, increase library visibility and access to decision makers, allow participation in community information networks, and provide leverage in additional fundraising projects. These partnerships have the potential to raise the profile of libraries. The accompanying community recognition for the parent organization may create a positive image, draw patients to the health center, and position the library and institution for future success in fundraising. Within institutions, development officers may become allies, mentors, and beneficiaries of the medical librarian's efforts. For a planned approach to community outreach with extra funding as the major objective, busy medical library administrators need guidelines. Standard participative techniques were applied to strategic planning by Indianapolis libraries to help achieve successful community outreach and to write joint statements of mission, vision, goals, and objectives.
INTRODUCTION
tunity for professional, personal, and political growth for the librarian involved in a successful cooperative venture. Finally, there is the opportunity to develop practical skills in understanding computer networks, learning the grant process, writing proposals, allocating time and energy, and using planning techniques that will strengthen a proposal. A local multitype library cooperative may have an important funding source in its community foundation, which is an increasingly popular philanthropical entity in the United States. The community foundation will expect input on information needs from local users and organizations, compelling the multitype library group to do strategic planning. The Indianapolis experience is a model for multitype libraries doing strategic planning within a community.
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Medical libraries are joining successfully with multitype community libraries and other local organizations to seek grants. Academic, hospital, and corporate health sciences libraries are reaching out to clinics, public health agencies, public libraries, and other nearby organizations to form community networks to better serve the information needs of local users. Some communities contain a state library, national health organization, or headquarters of a pharmaceutical or other corporation, all of which are potential partners for either proposal writing or grant funding. Other organizations may join forces with the local medical library for various purposes, including grant writing. Another hook for participation is the oppor252
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MULTITYPE LIBRARY COLLABORATIONS
Health sciences libraries have successfully cooperated with many types of local community nonmedical libraries-public, high school, parochial, corporate, junior college, private college, university, and state and county agency. Several have received funding for their collaborative efforts. The University of Cincinnati Medical Center Libraries, public libraries, hospital libraries, and other area partners received funding for NetWellness, a program that supports the delivery of electronic health information to rural residents of southern Ohio and urban and suburban communities in the Greater Cincinnati tri-state region. Project funding includes $375,000 from the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program sponsored by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Other funding comprised $300,000 from the State of Ohio and an excess of $500,000 from partners. Creators of the program have noted: "The attention NetWellness has brought the University of Cincinnati in the regional, state, and even national press, and its success in attracting the attention and support of the Ohio legislature and administration, have raised awareness of the libraries among faculty and administrators throughout the university" [1]. The University of Virginia Claude Moore Health Sciences Library (HSL) recently received Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) monies to cover equipment, software, and communications costs for a consumer health network. The systems were accessible at the HSL, Piedmont Virginia Community College, Orange County Public Library, and the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library [2]. In Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, the Kootenai Medical Center Library has been working with public libraries since 1987, writing LSCA III and private foundation grants to improve resource sharing and document delivery services. Using extra funding resources, the medical library opened a consumer health resource center at the hospital in 1996. It will function as a branch of the public library system, using the county's SIRSI library automation system and allowing anyone with a county library card to borrow books and video collections. This group also received an LSCA III grant to develop a county-wide free-net that provides Internet access and local information and referral services to all county residents. This project involves the local school districts, the county and city governments, the local economic development agency, most of the social service agencies in the county, and the United Way [3]. The United Health Services Learning Resources Department of Johnson City, New York, completed a proposal with their local AIDS organization and the public library system. The proposal was recently funded
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by the National Library of Medicine [4]. The Western New York Library Resources Council (WNYLRC) is a nonprofit, cooperative, multitype library network that provides services to rural hospital libraries. It is funded annually by a New York state grant. Member institutions include university, college, hospital, corporate, school, public, and special libraries in both nonprofit and for-profit environments [5]. The multitype county-wide consortium in Eden, North Carolina, consists of the public library as well as libraries at the community college, public health department, mental health department, and two local hospitals. A Morehead Memorial Hospital Library staff member serves as coordinator of the thirteenyear-old consortium. The libraries recently received two years of support from the National Library of Medicine for collection development. Though there is no longer a formal consortium agreement, all the libraries have reciprocal lending and reference agreements. Morehead Memorial Hospital, which is located adjacent to the public library, does not duplicate the journal subscriptions of the public library [6]. The Health Science Center (HSC) Library of the University of Florida, Gainesville, has successfully obtained two grants in conjunction with the Alachua County Library District. The most recent award, in 1995, was from LSCA funds through the State Library of Florida. The "Weliness after Fifty" cooperative project resulted in the HSC Library adding approximately 150 books to its collection on topics of wellness and disease prevention [7]. The Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago received an LSCA III grant from Illinois State Library to implement a statewide demonstration project that would provide consumer health information with InfoTrac's Health Reference Center CD-ROM. Project participants were academic and public libraries and clinics located in Chicago, Gibson City, Peoria, Rockford, and Urbana. The targeted libraries received database training, core reference sources, and referral procedures. The service provided was end user access to the consumer health database via a dial-up network server and a toll-free telephone number [8].
COMMUNITY OUTREACH BENEFITS
Community outreach activities are important to health institutions facing consolidations, rapid changes in health care costs, new laws, and ethical challenges. In today's climate of accountability, many health institutions must reaffirm or defend their relevance and quality to governing boards, the private sector, and the local citizenry. Health leaders can use positive community cooperation, such as medical-community library funding projects, as they talk with local leaders or critics about the quality and worth of their institutions.
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Community outreach also provides an opportunity for the medical librarian to talk to decision makers and keep them up-to-date on community activity. Medical librarians should be aware of the pool of seven billion dollars in grant money that is given away annually [9]. A grant award may translate into additional publicity for the library as well as recognition and respect from the leadership of parent organizations. The medical librarian who has received a grant becomes an example, resource, and mentor for others, many of whom perceive the grant application process as too formidable. The librarian with expertise in the grant process may benefit his or her institution in numerous ways, for example by searching specialized databases such as the Sponsored Programs Information Network (SPIN) database, by finding requests for proposals (RFPs) from company and governmental home pages on the World Wide Web, by using the latest electronic techniques for drafting and submitting proposals, or by accessing the electronic version of the Federal Register. Fundraising experts have noted: "The fundraiser often spends a great amount of time and energy preparing the nonprofit for fundraising. Commonly, the fundraiser assumes the role of educator, trainer, and facilitator, particularly in refining the relationship with and between the board and volunteers" [10]. Community contacts and grants are means of positioning the medical librarian to be a valued, powerful participant in an institution. Working with community libraries can be a challenge for a medical librarian. Local politics sometimes complicates coalition. Often, the institution's development officers can advise on sensitive relations, and eventually get the staff working on behalf of the library. The Director of the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library praised the work of a University of Virginia (UVa) development staff who brokered for her during the two years needed to assemble a successful partnership among medical-community libraries partnership that included representatives from area businesses, public schools, the community hospital, the health district, the planning commission, the housing authority, the University of Virginia, the UVa schools of nursing and medicine, and UVa hospitals [11].
in community access may be part of the effort that leads to collaborative funding.
Identifying desired outreach objectives Productive community outreach is a result of realistic goal setting. Experience suggests that after a period of time doing community outreach, the medical librarian will have achieved some or all of the following goals: * identification and collaboration with groups working for excellent community-wide access to information resources * expansion of the parent institution's community contacts to enhance learning, needs analysis, and dissemination of information in the community * completion of a planning cycle with local nonmedical libraries focusing on mutually beneficial funding opportunities * awareness of res6urces within the community to enhance service to the medical library's users, whether they are health professionals, consumers, or patients * recognition from decision makers * enhancement of skills in the areas of electronic mail use, editing techniques for word processing, or drafting of proposals by multiple authors on a secured Web
site * adjustment of the medical library's priorities to include the appropriate level of community outreach with the informed concurrence of the parent institution's CEO Appropriate, spirited collaboration with community libraries is important marketing for the parent organization of a medical library. Librarians can achieve new stature at their institutions through successful community library outreach while building skills and enriching their environments. THE INDIANAPOLIS COMMUNITY PLANNING EXPERIENCE In 1989 libraries in Indianapolis began cooperative efforts to obtain grants from an $18 million anonymous bequest managed by the Indianapolis Foundation. The annual interest from the Indianapolis Foundation Library Fund was to be used only by the Marion County (Indianapolis) libraries named in the bequest. These thirty-six Eligible Libraries (ELs) are * the Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) University Libraries; * libraries of the IU schools of dentistry, law, and med-
COMMUNITY OUTREACH DEFINITION Community outreach should be defined individually for each library. Community outreach is the relation of the medical library's collections and services to clientele beyond its primary customers. Restricted access to resources is common for medical libraries. When seeking partners for funding, negotiation may involve access to library services including circulation, photocopying, interlibrary services, and walk-in use of the medical collection. Preparing decision makers of the institution for possible changes
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icine; * libraries at the private institutions of Marion College and the University of Indianapolis; * Indianapolis Marion County Public Library; and * private, parochial, and public high school libraries of Indianapolis. Several cooperative proposals ensued. In 1992, the
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Strategic planning with multitype libraries
Ruth Lilly Medical Library (RLML) was awarded
$273,500 to be divided among the six academic libraries eligible for the Indianapolis Foundation Library Fund. The medical library's portion, $52,000, was used for books on oncology, consumer health, adolescent health, and other subjects of potential value to the larger community. Later, the RLML was granted $4,500 to purchase a Macintosh computer workstation with CD-ROM capability and $4,000 in software to be used at the RLML and six participating high school libraries. Each library was permitted to select software appropriate to its needs. This was the first public Macintosh installed at the medical library. Collegial support from the ELs helped the medical library obtain a single-institution grant from the Indianapolis Foundation Library Fund for a UNIX server and expanded dial-in capability to achieve statewide access to the library's medical databases. EL backing for this proposal recognized the medical library's past leadership, cooperative proposal writing, and extensive account management for the group. Another joint grant allowed the medical library to spend $29,000 for a subscription to Science Citation Index on CD-ROM. Ongoing costs are now shared by the medical library and the IUPUI University Libraries, who share access to databases.
Figure 1 Comments from meetings of Eligible Libraries representatives and community groups
The following comments were made at meetings between representatives of the Eligible Libraries and Indianapolis community groups: "Electronic access to information is clearly a high priority. Workshops on where to find information and how it can be used in the field of social services would be beneficial to this agency." "Transportation is a problem for the poor. The mobile library could provide end users access to computer equipment, reference materials, community programming, and literacy materials." "Libraries could provide the hardware and software that certain segments of the community cannot provide for themselves." "The issue is equitability, not necessarily being equal [for the diverse public library population]. There is a need for libraries to promote and support lifelong learning." "Library personnel should be involved in community planning, networking, and interacting with community leaders." "Libraries should invite agencies into their facilities and provide instruction on resources available."
Identifying needs and hopes of the Indianapolis
community groups The Ruth Lilly Medical Library also participated extensively in the ELs' initial, facilitated strategic planning process. Kenneth L. Gladish, Ph.D., executive director of the Indianapolis Foundation, challenged the
strategic planning process to define the difference that the ELs could make in Marion County and seek input from diverse community organizations. Those suggestions helped create a widely participative, facilitated planning process that focused on the information consumer. Library staff, collections, facilities, and programs all contributed to serving that consumer's needs. In this process, an early major challenge faced by the EL group was deciding how to determine community information needs and ideas efficiently. The three methods selected were * analysis of social service providers' long-range plans; * meetings with organizations that serve the aging, the young, central city residents, and other groups; and * one-on-one meetings with civic and community leaders and influential citizens. Reviewing thirty-seven long-range plans helped the ELs refocus themselves on diverse community inforBull Med Libr Assoc 85(3) July 1997
mation needs, rather than those of their traditional constituents. EL representatives then met with twenty-three community groups. During a four-month period in 1994 and 1995, ninety-nine community leaders discussed how libraries could help their organizations meet current and future programmatic, technological and informational needs (Figure 1). Meetings were held with the United Way, Community Centers of Indianapolis, Marion County Parent Teacher Association Council, Marion County school superintendents, elementary and middle school media specialists, the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, the Consortium for Urban Education, and the Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associates. Other groups providing input included the news media, arts organizations, providers to the disadvantaged and youth, and private, city, and township school officials.
Strategic planning with the community The community input was integrated with comments from Indiana library and information experts as well as from the ELs themselves. The two documents that resulted constitute the multitype ELs' blueprint for the future: a strategic plan for 2010 [12] and a two-year action plan [13]. With a membership of medical, academic, public, special, and high school libraries, the ELs form a complex organization with even more complex user-and nonuser-needs. It is not surprising that the EL strategic plan for 2010 is also complex. It has seven major parts: expectations, values, vision, mission, goals, strategies, and enabling strategies.
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Values Values are constant, non-negotiable principles that define how an organization will behave. While an individual library may not realize every value, the EL group taken as a whole adopted three value areas: Serving individual customers, serving the and community, working together.
Vision A vision is an image of a desired reality, a shared image of what an individual or organization wishes to become. The vision guides and inspires; it provides a clear focus for the future. It should be concise, memorable, and motivational, while differentiating the organization from others. This vision statement addresses the question, What is the difference that the Eligible Libraries will have made to benefit Marion County residents by 2010? The answer and vision: By 2010, the Eligible Libraries as a group will * provide one another's customers access to information that is free from physical, electronic, or procedural obstructions while respecting individual institution
information access in libraries, in other facilities, and electronically.
Goal 2. Increase cooperative planning among the ELs and with other organizations. Sample strategy for Goal 2: 2.1 Coordinate EL planning to implement more effective operations, collections, and services. Goal 3. Initiate partnerships for cultural, social, and economic development in Marion County. Sample strategy for Goal 3: 3.1 Inform decision makers about what the organization does.
Goal 4. Create a mix of financial resources for EL programs. Sample strategy for Goal 4: 4.1 Attract more matching funds.
Enabling strategies
Enabling strategies support every goal. They represent new paradigms for the way in which the ELs will work together to provide information services to a variety of customers. The enabling strategies include * staff development and support. To meet diverse, complex, and changing user information needs, ELs' staff must regularly receive continuing education. Further, they need to be supported by professional tools such as computers, appropriate-speed telephone lines, software, and Internet access. As one person commented at an EL meeting, "It's hard to dream the dreams if you cannot have the bottom line of connectivity." * a market approach. In their planning and operations, the ELs will utilize a market approach to information customers. That approach entails (a) regularly assessing customer and community organizations' needs and trends (market research), (b) utilizing or designing information collections, services, and products that meet those needs, and (c) measuring customer satisfaction to prepare for opportunities to provide enhanced services or join with others in doing so. * partnerships. Having worked together since 1989, the ELs are ready to seek partners from other libraries and from the community at large. They recognize that no one entity has the resources to own, or even license, all the information needed. Through partnerships, the benefit of information can be magnified, and public dollars can be matched with private dollars to serve Marion County's virtual community better. An eighteen-month process involving more than 150 community representatives, library and telecommunications experts, and multitype library staff identified information needs and hopes. The result was a straBull Med Libr Assoc 85(3) July 1997
policies; * develop customers who are skilled, independent information seekers (anywhere, anytime, anyplace); * be a catalyst for defining community information issues and creating solutions; and * be a vital and visible hub of community information resources and services.
Mission statement A mission statement concerns purpose and persons benefitted. It answers the question, What business are we in? The ELs have an ongoing mission to enhance the ability of information users to access high-quality collections and resources that (a) support and enrich individuals and organizations and (b) improve the quality of life in Marion County. Goals Goals are statements of outcome that support the vision. They provide what is needed for the vision to become reality. Some goals may never be entirely achieved, but the organization continues striving towards them. (Note: Only one exemplary supporting strategy is given for each goal.)
Goal 1. Provide high-quality collections, resources, and access for all Marion County information consumers. Sample strategy for Goal 1: 1.2 Develop and update methods to support and/or offer a variety of staff and customer training about
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tegic plan showing the difference that the Eligible Libraries will make in Marion County by 2010.
Early results Year 1 of the Indianapolis/ Marion County Eligible Libraries' fifteen-year strategic plan was 1996. The goals for that year included a new focus on the information consumer, the development of proposals that would reflect the strategic plan, administrative changes, and communications with both community groups and the ELs' parent organizations. Some specific accomplishments were made: * In January 1996 the ELs adopted a streamlined organization. A steering committee oversees two groups responsible for carrying out the four goals. Fax and computer technology speed up early review of proposal ideas and help committees do their work. * Outside experts now help to review draft proposals. * Training and revised documents emphasize how critical it is for proposals to address at least one of the four strategic goals and its objectives. * A professionally produced marketing brochure summarizes the strategic plan and process. Its distribution includes the thirty-seven organizations that contributed long-range plans, the twenty-three community groups, and the twenty-four telecommunications and library network experts. It has also been provided to the EL representatives for use with their own parent organization administrators and governance bodies [14]. * Since the adoption of the Strategic Plan for the Eligible Libraries, five proposals-all directly related to its goals-have been addressed. A proposal for fulltext journals in basic sciences (Goal 1) with shared access for the ELs has already been funded. Another proposal involves hiring a consultant to identify additional grant sources, to create strategies for attracting matching funds, and to coach librarians in proposal writing (Goal 4). A third proposal involves using interns from Indiana University School of Library and Information Science to enhance collection management among the multitype libraries (Goal 1). The other two proposals deal with multimedia link (Goal 2) and discretionary dollars for the ELs' steering committee to fund experts to help with marketing in the community and building relationships with the library's own administrators and boards (Goal 3).
TIPS FOR COMMUNITY LIBRARIES SEEKING FUNDS
because of its vested interest and the limited competition for dollars compared with state or federal monies. Each library group should learn as much as possible about its local foundation, the foundation's board members and administrators, and the projects it has recently funded. Read the foundation's recent annual reports. Meet the key players, either by appointment, by attending meetings where they are speaking, or through a mutual acquaintance. Knowing the local community foundation is critical to a librarian seeking extra funding. Corporations with headquarters or plants within the community are also excellent funding sources. Frequently money from local corporations and foundations is heavily sought after, and the development office of a parent institution should be informed of the librarian's intent so that the institution can make a coordinated effort to obtain funds from the local source. Especially when seeking a federal or state grant, both the funder and the parent institution have obligations and responsibilities concerning the proposal process and the receipt and expenditure of monies. The parent institution's accounting department, development officer, research officer, or dean's office may help to identify institutional protocol. Indirect costs to the parent institution may be expected or may already have been negotiated with the local funding agent. It is more complicated when multitype libraries seek funding jointly. One library can usually be the recipient of the grant and perform the account management. This must be investigated beforehand and covered in detail in the proposal. In deciding which library is best qualified to be the funding agent, there are several questions to explore. Whose parent institution can best work with decision makers and account management? Whose library staff has the knowledge, desire, and time to be the account manager for the multilibrary group? Should the account management be an in-kind contribution? The fund sponsor may not reimburse for fund accounting, so the librarian or staff member who volunteers to do the extra duty of grant account management must be willing to follow through on the necessary time commitments. The volunteer may be an expert in grant account management or simply be motivated to learn and grow. Volunteer account management should receive priority consideration by the multitype library group.
Community foundations build permanent resources for a variety of community needs, and have become the fastest growing philanthropic organizations in the country [15]. A community foundation is an excellent resource for multitype libraries within a community
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Development office support The library director should initiate communication with the institution's development officer, who may not be aware of the nature of relations between the library and the community. Development staff should talk with donors and be attentive to donor interests. Sometimes donors do not specify particular interests
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and development officers can present a library need to potential funders. The choice of library need presented should be based on previous verbal and written communication on library extra-funding priorities. Development staff work from three main principles: linkage to possible donors, financial ability, and interest. An experienced development officer will present no donation proposal before it is time, and will value any additional contacts and mutual interests discussed. "Fund development," it has been observed, "contributes directly to the bottom line of a health care organization, and good public relations/ community relations and volunteer relations assist in creating the favorable community conditions wherein successful resource development can be accomplished" [16]. Positive community links are valued and can earn appreciation for the librarian. In addition, when someone in the community needs health treatment and must select a hospital or health care giver, that person perceives the health care institution as approachable because of personal contacts or publicity in the local news media. Once the medical and community libraries have received funding, they can use that accomplishment to acquire even more resources for the parent health care institution. The Ruth Lilly Medical Library's relationship of many years with the Indianapolis Foundation was flourishing when the medical school received a sizeable donation from the Indianapolis Foundation toward a new cancer building. At that time the Indiana University development staff acknowledged that the medical library had a good relationship with the Indianapolis Foundation and was perceived as professional. The medical library was a valuable resource to the organization's development officers. Academic libraries generally work in isolation on campus and in the library world. It is vital that they develop relationships with potential partners on and off campus [17].
LOCATING FUNDING SOURCES FOR COMMUNITY PROJECTS
A community foundation can be found in the local telephone yellow pages under Foundations-Educational, -Philanthropi...