The Board of my library has commissioned a Vision and Plan 2015. The short form of the vision is "to connect people with a world of ideas". It is a detailed plan that tries hard to put readers into a future-looking frame of mind and to imagine what their library should be in 2015.
Of the six strategic goals presented by this Plan, #2 is "Re-brand the library as being books, but much more, emphasizing its role as a communty builder and library staff as catalysts for culture and learning". That's where I start to have trouble with it and my trouble continues though much of my reading of the rest of the plan. In short, books already are our brand, we don't need to build on them at all. In fact, I believe that for an increasing cohort of our communities, the Books-brand obscures their view of all the other things we can do for them.
I'm writing a detailed response to this Plan and over the next couple of weeks I'll publish it here. Hope you can come back and read it.
ps: and if I can find a link to the Vision & Plan 2015 from the Library's site, I'll post it here for sure. :-)
