Wired for the Future: Developing Your Library Technology Plan

To ensure that technology is used as a tool to meet library objectives, librarians must find the delicate balance between over-dependence on technology to meet patron needs and appropriate use. For public libraries with limited budgets and smaller staffs, planning how and where technology is used in the library is imperative.

This book is intended as a companion volume to the Public Library Association's (PLA) recently updated planning manual, Planning for Results: A Public Library Transformation Process (Professional Media, LJ 7/98). Co-author Nelson chaired the PLA committee that developed the manual. Mayo is also a librarian and now works as a library automation consultant. Wired for the Future aims to assist public librarians in developing a cogent technology plan. The first part outlines in detail 16 tasks to be performed by the planning committee. The second part, entitled "Tech Notes," strives to define the technology in a nontechnical manner, from cabling and firewalls to Z39.50. Each Tech Note ends with a list of additional resources including both print and online. The authors intend a Tech Notes homepage on the PLA web site to update this section. The final section contains reproducible workforms that correspond to the tasks in the first section, although a tear sheet or loose-leaf format would have been more practical. In addition, the book's weak binding sprung loose in this reviewer's hands. The pace of technological change, the availability of technologically designated grants, and limited public funding make careful planning all the more imperative. Every public library that is serving or planning to serve the technologically hungry and technologically phobic should own this book.ARobert Battenfeld, Long Island Univ.
Southampton Coll. Lib., NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.