County Librarian Presents Five-Year Strategic Plan to County Council

By Bob Montgomery

Huron County's Director of Cultural Services and County Librarian presented the Library's five-year Strategic Plan to county council at their last meeting.

Beth Rumble says the plan focuses on five strategic priority areas. She says the first is Welcoming and Inclusive Communities. Rumble points out libraries have become the place in many communities where anyone can go and feel welcome regardless of any kind of circumstance and they want to continue to build on that. She adds, the feedback they're getting from the community is that they see the library as a safe place and they want to make sure they continue to be welcoming and inclusive to everyone in the community. She says they can do that by recognizing the unique needs of individuals and groups that make up Huron County and creating opportunities for those people to connect with one another and reduce isolation.

Rumble says the second priority is innovation, and that involves using the technology available to them, trying new things, embracing failure and engaging in feedback. Rumble says communications is something they really want to focus on because libraries have changed so much over the last decade and they want to make sure that everyone in the community is aware of the services, resources and spaces that are available to them through the library. She adds, they also want to make sure they're listening to what the community wants. She says there was a time when the library essentially waited for people to come to the library, but now it's important that the library reach out to the community.

The fourth priority is youth. Rumble says they haven't focused as much on youth in the past as they would like to and they realize the voices and thoughts and opinions of young people are really important to the work that they're doing. And the last priority is literacy, which is obviously something that is critical to the work that the library does. But, Rumble says they want to focus on life-long learning and the various forms of literacy like media literacy and fake news, financial literacy and digital literacy. So that means connecting people to the experts in those fields.

Rumble says those are the five things they'll be focusing on for the next five years. And she adds, she's very pleased that the library's priorities align very well with the county's priorities.