Monroe County Library to survey community input

This year, Valentine’s Day represented not only a celebration of love, but for the Monroe County Public Library, it was a day that marked the beginning of a new direction. \nThe Monroe County Public Library mailed a survey Thursday to 3,000 households in the community to determine how it can improve in the future.\n“We want to know what everyone in the county thinks,” said Margaret Harter, community relations coordinator of the Monroe County Public Library. “This will guide us in setting goals.”\nThe Strategic Planning Team, which consists of employees from the library and representatives of the community, will use the information from the survey to impact a strategic plan that will create changes to the library in the next few years. \n“The survey will point out to the Strategic Planning Committee what the public expects the library to be doing,” said Stephen Moberly, member of the Monroe County Public Library board of trustees and member of the Strategic Planning Team.\nThe Monroe County Public Library has also used the input from focus groups to benefit expectations from the community, and the survey is considered only one of many steps to improve. \n“It is just one piece of our planning process,” Moberly said. “We are trying to reach our decision-making through a number of approaches.”\nThe survey, which takes about 10 minutes to complete, has 26 questions that focus on current and non-current use of the library, satisfaction or rating of the library, survey takers’ future thoughts and decisions for the library and a demographics section.\n“We will be using it to think about our mission and our services for the next three to five years,” said Sara Laughlin, director of the Monroe County Public Library, and Strategic Planning Team representative. \nLast summer, the team began working with ETC Institute, an independent consulting company, to construct the survey. The households chosen to participate in the survey were a random sample in order to statistically configure the results. \n“It is very important that we get it back from the people that do receive it in the mail,” Laughlin said, who also mentioned the library will turn to phone surveys if the participation in the mailed surveys is too low.\nAfter the surveys are completed and mailed back by the participants, the ETC Institute will gather and study the information and opinions. The results will assist the library in making future decisions with the interest of the community in mind.\n“It is just good to check in on the people we serve,” Harter said. “It will determine the direction we go.”