Community strengthening, strategic plans, and the things we should do

I had lunch with a friend of mine a couple of days ago ... it's amazing what you find out when you least expect it ... intermixed with the stories of his escapemanship travels through Prague and the Philippines after graduating from college, was talk of his "new" job ... He works in educational services for a public television station in the region, and mentioned that after a recent pow-wow with the station president and the board, his roll is to go out into the community and link up with representatives from public, community, educational, and other service organizations to develop strategies for helping them achieve their missions and visions using the station's broadcasting expertise ...

To me, that's what libraries should do ... instead of putting together a strategic plan that identifies how we should build collections, develop a programming calendar, and emphasize our reference/information services, we should focus on helping our constituents (patrons, public agencies, and private businesses) achieve their goals ... that'll bring way more value to a community than would focusing inwardly on traditional "library" stuff ...

Anyhow ... after he told me about his new focus, I bought his lunch ... and began to hope that I'd be able to do the same, very soon!