A couple of changes to our plans for the Alignment and Strategic Initiatives

I wanted to let you know about a couple of changes we're going to make related to the schedules of the Alignment and the implementation of the Library Unbound strategic plan ... 

Firstly, we have decided to pull down the System-wide Manager of Children's Services vacancy announcement and rework the job a bit to include greater oversight for family and school services (in addition to kid's work).  We've done the same thing recently with other positions, and I believe it's better to rewrite it now then after we fill it -- that would be unfair to all candidates and even those who chose not to apply.  The re-write will probably take us a couple of weeks, so all interested folks should be on the lookout for the new listing in the very near future.

The second change is related to the four initiatives and our timing for implementing them in a system-wide way ... During the Library Managers' meeting today, we decided that it would be best to spend most of FY2017-18 (July 1 - June 30) working through the Access and Engagement plan as it has been written for Member Services staff.  This will allow them to explore and experience the new job roles without also introducing a totally new way to plan and deliver local library programs.  Instead, we will pull back from full implementation of the four initiatives led from Learning Experiences (LX), which are: (1) early childhood literacy, ages birth through three years; (2) homework help; (3) workforce development; and (4) knowledge and awareness of locally relevant content.  Since we are still crafting and hiring some of those jobs (including the System-wide Manager of Children's Services), after filling them, the LX team will research, design, and build prototype services that will be piloted across several libraries next spring.  We will still ask Library Managers to help prepare their staffs for rollout in the following year, but we will not plan to fully implement them across the system until FY2018-19.

I know that these are biggish changes, and I wanted to stress that they are in response to some of the feedback we received from Library department heads and managers, community partners, and a number of you.  Thanks for rolling with the changes ... we hope that this will give us all a better chance at success as we work through the Alignment and the Library Unbound strategic plan.

Thanks again,

Tim