The Daniel Boone Regional Library (DBRL) Board of Trustees [1] adopted the 2009-2017 Strategic Plan [2] in April 2009. The plan includes new vision and mission statements, a core values statement and nine goals [3]. Three key ideas are at the heart of the plan:
- Expanding and enhancing library services for our patrons
- Creating awareness of the library's value to the community and
- Enhancing the library's organizational effectiveness.
Each year staff writes an action plan that contains the necessary details to implement the priorities for the coming year. From the action plan, the operating budget [4] for the upcoming year is prepared and presented to the board in November. Staff provides quarterly progress reports to the board.
For the 2009-2017 Strategic Plan, the planning team, made up of seven board members, the DBRL director [5] and associate director, and three community members (Craig Brumfield, loan officer for Veterans United Home Loans; Lee Fritz, Callaway County presiding commissioner; and Teresa Maledy, Commerce Bank president), solicited input from the community about priorities for library service. The team received responses through face-to-face public meetings in ten communities, sit-down meetings with community leaders, DBRL staff meetings and through postcards and the website. Economic and demographic reports also provided important information. The planning team, with help from professional library planning consultant Ellen Miller, crafted the resulting plan.
Planning Chair Rosie Gerding said this of the strategic plan: "This plan is intended to cover the next eight years, from now until 2017. That's the date when the Columbia district will pay off the last of the debt on the Columbia Public Library, and that brings with it the opportunity for the boards to start discussing other possibilities for district boundaries [6]. Whatever the boards choose to do at that time, we felt like that would be a logical time to end this plan."