Every five years the Mackenzie County Library Board works with our libraries, stakeholders, partners and the public to gather information and then we sit down and put together a plan for the upcoming five years of library services in our region. A Plan of Service helps a board govern at a strategic level and aligns the libraries with community needs and helps the library measure its success and identify improvements and work towards stronger library services.
The Libraries Regulation requires boards to have a current plan, and is a requirement for Provincial funding. Our current plan was set to expire in late 2019, we were granted an extension due to the disruption to all our communities due to the Chuckegg and Jackpot Creek fires. The plan is based on a community needs assessment, which can include survey’s, stakeholder meetings and patron interviews. It is important to gain insight from not just current patrons, but also past patrons, our partners and stakeholders. Equally important is to gain insight into why citizens aren’t current users of our libraries.
Our NEW PLAN OF SERVICE has been approved and is available to view or download, please click on the link.
Mackenzie County Libraries_2020-2025 Plan of Service
We have had 518 citizens complete the survey and some of the responses so far look like this… lots of information to formulate goals can be gained from these questions.
- A quick look shows that our libraries rate a 4.4 average rating,
- that Facebook is the best way to communicate with the public,
- that the majority of people do not know that if we don’t have an item on the shelves or through Inter-Library loan that it can be put on a ‘wish list’ for review when our libraries order materials.
- that the vast majority of the respondents are between 26 and 54 years old
- that close to 30% of the respondents are not currently members at any of our libraries
- that about 25% of the respondents have been library members for more than 10 years, and only about 13% less that two years.
- That downloading or streaming of Audio Books is the most popular electronic service requested, followed by Freading eBooks and then Freegal Music
When we dig down into the responses and trends, and add to this the stakeholder and partner input we will be able to create a strong plan forward for the next five years!
Every year we send in our statistics to the Province as they track Provincial wide library use. We are fortunate that 2019 held Provincial funding stable for libraries, we are awaiting word on what 2020 will bring from the Province. We have also been notified that County funding will remain the same for 2020. This graph below shows some of our impressive statistics for the last submitted year which is 2018.
Mackenzie County Libraries 