APPLS Vision Committee


 

In 2007, APPLS created a Vision Committee to develop a statewide vision for county library system services.

 

Vision Committee members were Diane Ambrose, David Belanger, Jonelle Darr, Lyn Meek and Julie Rinehart.

 

The APPLS Vision Committee met several times in November-December 2007 to develop a vision for county library system services. 

 

In creating this vision, the committee reviewed:

 

The committee’s first working document, Vision for County Library System Services - December 3, 2007.doc was reviewed with the APPLS group on March 12-13, 2008. 

 

Following the APPLS meeting in March, the document was revised to include suggestions made by APPLS members.

 

A new draft was created:  County Library System Services: Standards for Excellence & Evaluation -June 6, 2008.doc.  This second draft will be reviewed by APPLS members at the association's next meeting on June 12, 2008.

 

Highlights of changes made in the second draft include:

 

  1. New document working title created.
  2. Library system service levels paragraph (page two) was reworded to reflect that the document is an evaluative tool, not a document that was proposing a plan for revised state funding.
  3. All standards were renumbered consecutively in each column.
  4. Standards that were exact duplicates of those in the Basic level were removed from the Quality and Excellence levels.  This was done because it did not make sense to say "meet the basic standards, and then choose 17 additional criteria (or 38 criteria at the Excellence level) from below.  Now it is clear what the additional criteria are for the two higher levels.
  5. A Planning and Evaluation section was added.  (Actually, the original document had this information; it was located in the Governance section.  This information was moved to the new Planning and Evaluation section.)

 

One of APPLS suggestions, that the document include more qualitative rather than quantitative measures has not yet been incorporated into this draft.  The Vision Committee needs additional time to meet and discuss how qualitative measures can be integrated. 

 

A checklist of APPLS Standards for Excellence & Evaluation.doc is available to help system administrators and library system boards determine areas in which system services can and/or should improve. This checklist was developed to accompany an online APPLS survey that will be conducted in September 2008.