CILIP recommends that the librarian participates in the school's improvement planning process with the same rigour as other academic staff. This means that:

Introduction

There are two main vehicles for articulating and achieving the vision for the school library. These are the library policy and the improvement plan. The librarian needs to state explicitly how the vision of the library's role, as explored in Chapter 1, will be realized. This may be expressed by developing the library's aims and objectives in a policy document or mission statement. The improvement plan document sets out how these aims and objectives will be achieved by setting targets, establishing time frames and costings and detailing measurable outcomes. Although the templates in Appendices 7, 8 and 9 may be used as a guide, the librarian should adopt the policy and improvement plan styles already in use by the school.

The school library policy

The school library policy should define how the library will help deliver the aims and objectives of the school and provide a vision for the library service. It reflects the ethos, aspirations and changing priorities of the whole school community. At the same time, it provides a practical framework for managing the school library and achieving its full potential. Alternatively a mission statement and a discrete series of supporting library policies can be used. These will indicate how the library supports teaching and learning, as well as including basic operational issues. As priorities and practices differ from school to school there is no one definitive list of policies that a secondary school should have and, rather than invest time developing a bank of policies all at once, it is recommended that only policies that are actually needed are created. Appendix 9 gives examples of different approaches to a policy about overdues.