Transportation Library Quick Guide: Demonstrating Value: Agency Alignment

Having the support of agency leadership is critical for any program’s survival. Leadership support requires succinctly describing value in an overarching strategy or other method that shows the library or information center is aligned with the agency’s strategy, goals and values, such as:

• Directly reflecting agency goals or other language appearing in an agency strategic plan in a library or information center strategy.
• Regularly surveying or facilitating focus group discussions with employees to ensure needs are understood.
• Attending agency meetings to stay informed about priorities.
• Meeting periodically with agency leadership or reaching out in writing to request feedback and understand needs and interests.
• Briefing new leadership on information services.

When discussing the value of a library, one special librarian recognized:

Even long-established special libraries will not be kept open simply because their users like the service, or even because they save their users time and money. Today’s special libraries must integrate themselves into projects aligned with organizational goals and be able to demonstrate their contributions to all levels of management. Traditional metrics like number of volumes, gate counts or reference transactions are useless to administrators without any context, because library usage in and of itself is not likely to be one of the larger organization’s goals. Outcomes must be defined in terms of these goals.

Another member of the library community went further, noting that “special librarians who have not effectively linked their services with evolving organizational goals face uncertain futures.”