An organization’s vision identifies its core reason for existence and needs to stand the test of time.


It was agreed that the vision of CHLA/ABSC is as follows:

“The vision of CHLA/ABSC is to facilitate and enable credible knowledge transfer in health sciences through leading edge technologies and partnerships.

CHLA/ABSC Mission:

The mission statement for an organization outlines how the organization intends to achieve the vision.

It was agreed that the mission of CHLA/ABSC is as follows:

“It is the mission of CHLA/ABSC to lead health librarians towards excellence through professional development, networking and advocacy.

An organization establishes strategic directions to focus energies to achieve its vision and mission, build on the identified strengths and overcome the identified challenges.

CHLA/ABSC’ strategic directions were identified as:

1. Professional Development
2. Information Sharing
3. Organizational Viability
4. Advocacy

Professional Development:

CHLA/ABSC has identified the following objective as part of this strategic direction:

“Create and deliver Continuing Education in a variety of formats.”

Information Sharing:

CHLA/ABSC has identified the following objective as part of this strategic direction:

“Encourage the use of leading edge technologies to share information and knowledge within the profession and outside of it.”

Organizational Viability:

CHLA/ABSC has identified the following objective as part of this strategic direction:

“Work to identify means to ensure continuing value and relevance to our members.”

Advocacy:

CHLA/ABSC has identified the following objective as part of this strategic direction:

“Advocate for the profession in a number of areas: for librarians; for positions on issues; for education in library schools and for standards and benchmarking.”

The strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of the organization and threats to the organization include the following:

CHLA/ABSC Strengths

• Commitment of the leadership and the members
• The size of the organization, easier to hear concerns and allows members to be closer to the decision making
• Good bonding, intimacy, sense of community
• Ability for specialization and cross disciplinary partnerships
• Spans the information divide from print to electronic
• Leadership is creative
• Librarians are aligned with leaders in research; have some power
• Ahead of the game technologically/electronically
• New librarians more involved in technology
• Great quality sessions at conference
• Have an association office to support efforts

CHLA/ABSC Weaknesses

• Not well funded
• Constant battle to get funding support for association membership and continuing education
• Creating value for members so they will get more involved in the association
• Image of the association need to be improved
• Service ethic can hold us back
• Lack of diversity within profession, mostly female
• Not a good knowledge exchange between professionals
• The jurisdictional setup of healthcare systems; CHLA/ABSC as a
  national organization pulls against the provincial structure of health

CHLA/ABSC Opportunities

• Use both customer service and technology people to balance the profession
• Set up non-traditional ways to encourage research at a high level
• Help library schools to develop curriculum so that health library students come out with the right skills
• Set up student chapters

CHLA/ABSC Threats

• Younger librarians don’t see the relevance of standards and are often afraid to ask
• Large number of library associations and the dollars have to be split
• Young librarians have trouble seeing the opportunities in health librarianship
• MLA is very strong
• CHLA/ABSCdoes not blow it’s own horn
• Difficult to overcome the impression that everything can be found on the web; this does not give options or relevant value
• Not being able to fund more staffing
• The perception of how the world sees health librarians
• Not recognized as an authority within the organization
• Different generational expectations

Performance Indicators:

There are many ways that organizations measure their achievement of
meeting their strategic directions and the impact on the vision and
mission. Here are three ways that CHLA/ABSC may like to use to evaluate
its performance:

Financial Health Indicators

• Financial viability
• Compliance with annual budget

Organizational Health Indicators

• Progress on Operational Plan
• Evaluations from Continuing Education sessions

Effectiveness Indicators

• Increase in membership
• Increase in number of people going to the CE sessions

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