Huron County Librarian Presents Strategic Plan to County Council
by Bob Montgomery
Huron County Librarian Beth Rumble presented the Library's new five-year Strategic Plan to County council recently.
The new Strategic Plan is a five-year plan and includes a new Mission and Vision that is shorter and more concise. “The vision is imagine more, a place to learn, connect, create and grow. The Mission is that the Huron County Library brings information and people together to enrich lives and support a thriving community,” said Rumble.
The Library will be focusing their efforts over the next five years on welcoming and inclusive communities, innovation, communications, youth and literacy. Part of their previous five-year Strategic Plan involved looking at how they could engage with the community. “We've kind of found a really effective method of going out to the community, talking to them about what their needs and aspirations are and then determining how the Library can meet those needs,” said Rumble. She notes they can't meet all of the community's needs but, if people are feeling socially isolated, they're feeling excluded, or they need things to do, the Library can address some of those issues. She also says interacting with the community helps the Library to be effective with their resources rather than just guess at what might be helpful.
Rumble says communication is a big part of the new Strategic Plan and they still have work to do. “We did a lot of public engagement for this survey, we have over 28-hundred survey responses. We're still hearing that people aren't aware of all of the many new services that we provide so that's a big priority for us,” says Rumble. They have to let people know that books are just one of the ways that they can react with the community.
Focusing on younger people is another exciting priority for the Library, and they've been very fortunate to be able to jump-start that with funding from a large donation that is specifically targeted towards youth. They'll be dedicating space in their libraries just for youths. Rumble says when people start reading at an early age they tend to be readers and ambassadors of the Library for life. Unfortunately, they’ve missed part of that group of young people when COVID shut the Library down, so they have to try to reach out to that group now.
