The Perry Public Library is in the middle of another strategic planning process and so far, director Mary Murphy says things are going well.

Two community team meetings were held last month, which helped gather a variety of information.

“We got really great information back and rank ordered the library service responses that people in the community team wanted to see in the library and we will go through the staff strategic planning and meeting again with our outside consultant from the state library, leading us through this process and coming up with our mission statement for the next three to five years.”

Murphy says while some of the responses were surprising, they found out a lot of exciting information.

“Something we do implicitly at the library but not explicitly, and maybe it’s something that we should focus on is being a hub of communication in the community.  We answer lots and lots of reference questions and tell people where to find information, but having it in a formal form, like this is where you can find the public health nurse, this is for health information… anything that is doing in Perry, we would have that information, or the county.”

Murphy says there are some things the library is doing really well, such as their early literacy programming, so she hopes this process will help identify other things they can implement and help the community with.