2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
You may be interested in creating a plan for the Library of the Future. Or
your library may be so advanced that your benchmarking goal is much
narrower.
Expect to discover some good news about your library during the course of
the visits—in some ways your library may be more advanced than others.
Benchmarking is a good way to connect with your peers. You will probably
meet some librarians who you may call periodically to catch up on what’s
new in their library.
Benchmarking will take a lot of time, right?
Comprehensive benchmarking can be quite time consuming and involves a number
of steps. But you can make this process your own by selecting those components
that are most useful to you. A modest benchmarking exercise might involve
exchanging information or visits with a couple of libraries a year. The authors think
that libraries need to benchmark almost continuously. Technology and societal
change is moving so fast that benchmarking is not something that can be done
every five years.
The chart below shows you the range of activities involved: