Creating an Outreach Plan That Accounts for the Seen and Unforeseen

Abstract

Outreach is a necessary component of an academic library’s operations and often requires extensive time for the planning, approval, execution, and assessment depending on the personnel involved and the scope of the event. Recent literature has started to examine how academic libraries are planning outreach to align strategically with the goals of their larger institutions, but not how they balance these efforts when new opportunities arise throughout the academic year. This article will provide a brief analysis of the literature which addresses issues that academic librarians who plan outreach face. The second half of this article will provide a case study of how the author planned, created, and implemented an outreach plan at her academic branch library. This case study will detail the process of how she used an outreach plan to establish outreach that was efficient and impactful with limited staffing, while also aligning strategically with the goals of her library and the larger institution. In addition, this case study will detail how she used this outreach plan throughout the 2019-2020 academic year to guide decision making when new outreach opportunities would arise. This article will conclude with lessons learned from this process.