Leadership and Planning
Strengthen Your School Library
Build a clear direction for your school library. Use evidence to understand where you are now, identify priorities, plan meaningful improvement and demonstrate the impact of your work.
Lead Library Practice
Great school libraries are built through vision, planning and purposeful leadership.
What Does School Library Practice Look Like?
School library practice is a complex mix of roles and tasks. School library professionals strengthen literacy, lead learning, spark creativity, build community, and design collections and environments that are purposeful and inclusive. A school library that looks to innovate, responds to needs, and adapts to the changing education landscape is a school library worth having.
A modern school library buzzes with life, learning, creative and critical thinking and a sense of warmth, welcome and community. It is one run by passionate and skilled school library staff who oversee the library with clear leadership and strategic direction and purpose.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning for school libraries can be instrumental for guiding the direction of the school library, aligning practice with the school's goals, and reducing the overwhelm of competing tasks and limited resources.
Why Every School Library Needs A Strategic Plan
Envisioning the Future of School Libraries With Strategic Planning
Creating A Vision
A vision is a short statement that outlines what it is you do, how and why. It sets the tone for your library or professional practice and where you want to go. It is a statement about your vision for the future. What you’d like to achieve and be remembered for. It is underpinned by your values and helps you set goals.
Conducting An Audit
You can't improve what you don't measure. Check your school library's strengths, opportunities for growth, priorities to make informed decisions and plan for the future by gathering data and evidence, creating a clear direction forwards.
Comprehensive audit tools coming soon.
School library insights. Fresh strategies, practical tools, and inspiration for your library, straight to your inbox.
Reporting
Using evidence to tell the story of your school library is a powerful way to document the impact of the school library staff and services. Reports may be formal at the conclusion of school years, or informal and used throughout the year.
© Copyright 2026 Madison Dearnaley.