Determining Your Public Library's Future Size: A Needs Assessment and Planning Model - Softcover

Brawner, Lee B.; Beck, Donald K., Jr.

9780838906712: Determining Your Public Library's Future Size: A Needs Assessment and Planning Model

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0838906710 ISBN 13: 9780838906712

Publisher: Amer Library Assn, 1996

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Book by American Library Association, Brawner, Lee B., Beck, Donald K.

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About the Author:

Lee B. Brawner is executive director of the Metropolitan Library System in Oklahoma City.

From Library Journal:

Your library is full and you have to expand. Where do you begin? Three words?planning, planning, planning. Add this book to Vernon Dalmour's A Planning Process for Public Libraries (Professional Reading, LJ 1/15/81), Charles McClure and others' Planning and Role Setting for Public Libraries (ALA, 1987), Nancy Van House and others' Output Measures for Public Libraries (ALA, 1987. 2d ed.), and the Wisconsin Library Building Project Handbook (State of Wisconsin, 1990) when you start, particularly since it updates many of the techniques outlined in these titles. Brawner is executive director of Oklahoma City's Metropolitan Library System and a library consultant who has helpled plan more than 100 library building projects. Beck is an architect who has designed more than 40 public, academic, and special libraries. Creating an imaginary setting, the Sterling Public Library, the authors show the step-by-step procedures for planning your addition, whether it be adding on or building new. In order to find out what is really needed in your community and not just what you think people want, you'll learn about establishing a team, doing an assessment, conducting a telephone survey of users and nonusers, and using a consultant. Following the authors' advice, you won't just plan for the immediate future, but you'll be able to consider needs for ten and 20 years down the road. You will also learn how to rank your library with others of comparable size. Not content to present just one layout, Brawner and Beck present three different critiques of a floor plan for expansion to show the weaknesses and strengths of each scheme. Appendixes contain space planning guidelines, sample request for proposal (RFP), a telephone survey form, site selecting, and guidelines for staffing, all of which are helpful to the planner. While you may not agree with all the authors' recommendations since every library is unique, the purpose of the book is to teach the tools of assessment and planning for expansion. A worthy addition for medium and larger libraries.?Marie Bruni, Huntington Memorial Lib., Oneonta, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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