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The Current Situation And Institutional Structure Of The Chicago Public Library

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This paper analyzes the current situation and institutional structure of the Chicago Public Library system in the light of current research of mission, vision, and value statements. A literature review on organizational mission, vision, and value statements reveals that the consensus of the field is that organizations benefit from articulating mission, vision, and value in separate statements that are drafted with organizational stakeholders first and foremost in mind. The current Chicago Public Library mission statement does not fully meet these criteria, and this paper presents new mission, vision and value statements for the institution that focus on the information needs of their users while addressing the specific strengths and …show more content…

Recent leadership changes and budget cuts have created a period of organizational crisis in the library, albeit a crisis put into perspective in comparison to the Great Chicago Fire. This situation has meant that many important priorities, like updating the mission, vision, and values statements of the organization have been ignored in lieu of seemingly more pressing issues. The old mission statement of the CPL is not even easily discoverable on the new organizational website.
Of course, prioritization is necessary in any healthy institution. Ironically, however, institutional prioritization is not even possible without a clearly articulated mission, vision, and value statements. In this moment of crisis, the CPL would benefit from updated and revised mission, vision, and value statements that more closely reflect the current situation, and a specific vision to move beyond it. This paper provides an overview of the scholarly literature on mission, vision, and value statements to discern the most important features in successful versions of these statements. After recognizing that successful statements must be drafted with users’ needs in mind, we present new mission, vision, and value statements more appropriate to the current users and surrounding context of the CPL today. The paper concludes with an environmental scan and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and

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