Knowledge Bank

Environmental scanning—the practice of taking a step back and reviewing the context of a system, the key players, similar services available elsewhere, and how information/resources/ money flows through the system—provides a holistic view upon which recommendations can be made. Although this approach has been a mainstay in library strategic planning processes,1 it is less prevalent in planning ongoing work. This process has many different names depending on the field: a traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis from the business world,2 capture planning in the realm of research development offices,3 landscape analysis for entrepreneurs,4 or competitive intelligence for our colleagues in special libraries.5 Overall, an environmental scan typically has both an internal and external focus. It concentrates less on what the competition is doing and more about a snapshot of current practices. It is an approach used to inform local strategic planning and provides a way to gather information about the local environment to make more informed decisions.6 In libraries, there are many stakeholder perspectives to keep in mind while designing services, delivering collections, or planning future projects. For this reason, having a clear understanding of the environment will allow those developing strategies to stay informed of their users’ needs as well as anticipate any barriers present that may interfere with a successful implementation of the vision. For example, in my work as a liaison, scanning the environment helped inform my collection development to know the research specialties of my faculty as well as program offerings at the graduate and undergraduate levels. I gathered information about the courses where I offered instruction, examined the course catalog to identify additional areas for inroads, and compared with colleagues at other institutions who were partnering in similar courses.