[Publib] Management fads

[Backwage at aol.com]

Yes indeed.  If you want to see an example of embarrassingly dumb  work with 
a useless output, go to any library website and type "mission  statement" in 
the search box.  These are  either high-flown  statements of the obvious or 
bizarre ravings with little connection to the  subject at hand.  Many of them 
read like ungrammatical fever dreams or the  delusions of a committee on 
laudanum.  I worked at a large library whose  mission statement appeared to have been 
constructed from the national  anthems of third-world countries, translated 
into English by someone with a  dictionary and a poor grasp of language.  Nobody 
seemed to know where it  had come from; it just went on and on until it ran 
out of breath and quit in a  half-completed phrase.  Eventually it disappeared 
from the library's web  site.
 
Mission statements remind me of high school alma maters, another form of  
mission proclamation.  My own sticks in memory after three decades, like  gum to 
a shoe:
 
Between the mountains and the sea
There stands a school most fair
Each room and hall and bench and tree
Bespeaks the love we bear
 
Mind you, this establishment was a concrete massif more like a state prison  
than a campus in appearance; it regularly produced no National Merit Scholars, 
 though quite a few tow truck drivers.  
 
As to the library, I wonder why it is that we feel the need to define what  
it is when the public already has an excellent concept of the thing, and in any 
 event, an enthusiasm for the institution which often exceeds that of its own 
 employees.  For that matter, how is the mission of any one particular  
library different than that of the one in the next town--how could it be?   The 
hollow boosterism of the mission statement mocks our efforts; the library is  
there, and we are there within it.  If the desire to provide that service  (for 
that degree of compensation and regard) isn't enough indication of what we  
intend, then posting a maudlin paragraph on a website isn't going to convince  
anybody different.  
 
Now that I think of it, I'm going to produce my own personal mission  
statement, and perhaps set it to music.  Now there's a time-killer for that  dull 
afternoon.
 
Michael McGrorty
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