‘Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now’ (Alan Lakein)
Given that the sun’s shining brilliantly and that it’s half-term week (as well as that of the Urdd Eisteddfod and theGuardian Hay Festival), you’d be forgiven for thinking that the past few days in the Library may have been quieter than usual. Behind-the-scenes, nothing could be further from the truth.
The months of May and June are always busy from a planning perspective as we start implementing our current operational plans, which provide us with maps of the work and activities that we hope to achieve by the end of next March. This is also a time for looking ahead to the next financial year, that of 2011-12, and deciding how we are going to deliver our core functions of collecting, preserving, giving access and information, publicising and interpreting, and professional collaboration.
My work this week has focused on the Library’s vision document, ‘Twenty-Twenty: A long view of the National Library of Wales’, and I’ve been extracting its main themes for discussion later this month. No-one was more surprised than me when the resulting list ran to five whole pages; thank goodness that we’ve given ourselves a decade in which to realise them all! My next task will be to present these themes to the Library’s Board of Trustees, Advisory Body and Senior Management Team, and decide which will form the basis of the Library’s work in 2011-12. These discussions will inform my redrafting of the corporate plan, which will be available for comment later in the year and finalised by next February.
As you can see, this summer is going to be busy – no long holiday for me – but seeing the new corporate plan published online in the Spring will be a fitting reward.
Oh, and the Library hasn’t been that quiet after all; for those of you who like facts and figures, I can reveal that we’ve had approximately 1200 people visit us this week (yes, counting visitors is another one of my duties…).
Sara Lee Branch
Strategy and Research Manager