Annual Report 1999/2000

• Benchmarking for Strategic Performance Improvement Annette Gohlke, President and co-owner of Library Benchmarking International. Learn what benchmarking is, why it's beneficial to your library, how to identify critical success factors of your customers, and how to use benchmarking effectively to increase productivity, improve customer service, and gain efficiencies and economies. Learn how to use a step library-benchmarking model to achieve successful results. Identify meaningful metrics that you can use to support your libraries' value in hard-hitting, quantitative terms. Benchmarking is a Total Quality tool used to measure and compare your library's work processes with those in other libraries. The goal of benchmarking is to increase your library's performance by adopting the best practices of your library benchmarking partners.
• Networking: Ideas and Suggestions for Peer Interactions Brenda Ealey, Administrator, Southeast (NE) Library System: Lisa Kelly, Information Services Coordinator, Nebraska Library Commission; Pam Scott, Library Consultant, Nebraska Library Commission; Ted Smith, Director, Norfolk, (NE) Public Library; Carol Speicher, Administrator, Northeast (NE) Library System; Barbara Voeltz, Librarian, Nebraska Game and Parks.
  A panel of six will discuss the value of peer networking including the hows and whys. This will be an open-ended discussion designed for sharing ideas and suggestions.
• Disasters-Natural and Unnatural: First Steps to Library Preparedness Katherine L. Walter, Special Collections and Preservation Department, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Basic information on how to prepare for disasters in libraries. What to do to mitigate disasters-planning documents, supplies and training.