A Three-Year Strategic Plan for Academic Library of IAIN Ar-Raniry

The Academic Library of The State Institute of Islamic Studies of Ar-Raniry (IAIN Ar-Raniry) is one of the biggest libraries in Aceh. This library was established in 1963 along with its institution. The library is located in the center of campus of IAIN Ar-Raniry, Darussalam Banda Aceh, and a ten-minute drive from Banda Aceh City.
To sustain the operational activities of the library, the library has delegated its activities into seven departments; reference, administration/finance, circulation, acquisition, preservation, collection processing, and automation, the newest department. Each department is chaired by a professional librarian. In order to support the activities of the departments, the library has 30 staff, consisting of professionals, paraprofessionals and support staff. 20 of them are permanent staff or public servants, and the rest are temporary staff who work as volunteers.
To serve its 5000 clients, which consist of students, lecturers, researchers and other academic staff, the library provides around 40,000 copies collection. All the collections are available in printed formats consists of books and journals. However, although the library does not have electronic resources, since June 2006 the library has established Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) for searching process.
As a government organization, the academic library of Ar-Raniry is funded by the government of Indonesia. The total of annual budget is of $100,000. This budget is allocated into 5 major parts; acquisition and collection development, human resources development, library automation, marketing, and others. Forty per cent of the budget is allocated to collection, fifteen per cent for training and staff development, and twenty five per cent for library automation, ten per cent for library marketing and ten per cent for other utilities. The salaries of the staff are paid directly by the government through the institution.
Vision:
To develop the library of Ar-Raniry as a modern Islamic information resources and learning center to support teaching, learning and research process of Ar-Raniry Institute by providing adequate and relevant resources with high quality services.

Mission:
The Academic library of Ar-Raniry:
 Generates the three pillars of Indonesian Higher Education and Ar-Raniry’s mission.
 Develops and preserves collections
 Leads on Islamic information professional services
 Simulates and promotes the internal research and publications of Ar-Raniry

Values:
The library staff of IAIN Ar-Raniry’s library:
 endeavor for excellence in fulfilling the library’s mission;
 Strive to support the three pillars of Indonesian higher education
 struggle to develop literate community
 encourage vision and innovation of Ar-Raniry
 deploy advanced technologies and maximize the capability of our resources


SWOT analysis:
Strengths:
• The library has some professional librarians (LIS graduate)
• The library also has two specialists in automation field (graduated from computer sciences)
• The library has an annual budget from the government.
• The automation program is highly demanded by university students.
• There is a strong commitment both from librarians and the institution to build this technology system.
Weaknesses:
• The scope of the collection is still limited both in terms of subjects and formats
• The library has very limited authority to run its policies.
• The limited fund available is another serious problem of the library.
• The library performance is still not too attractive and comfortable.
• The library is still weak in managerial aspects
Opportunities,
• The library has become one of the development targets of the institution and the local government.
• Besides government funds, other donor funds (NGOs) are available for collection enhancement and other steps in the automation process.
• The academic community is willing to support the library program.


Threats:
• The rapid changes of technology can affect to the increase of library budget.
• Lack of government policy in supporting library programs.
• Low literacy of community

Strategic Planning Priorities:
The main purpose of the academic library of Ar-Raniry is to support the academic process of its institution in terms of teaching, learning and research programs, known as the three pillars of Indonesian higher education. In order to reach its primary purpose, the library of Ar-Raniry is planning to develop four core programs in the next three years (2009-2011): Acquisition, Human Resources Development, Library Automation, and Library Marketing.
Priority 1: Library Automation
Goals:
1. To make the library services and resources more accessible and useful for its users
2. To expand on-line library services through Local Area Network systems (LAN) to all faculties and other units within the area of Ar-Raniry institute
3. To expand library networking; regional, national and international.
Objectives:
• To provide adequate searching media (OPACs)
• To expand access points (workstations)
• To develop easy-searching systems
• To increase the accuracy of data inputting
• To allocate 40 per cent of annual automation budget for hardware
• To allocate 30 per cent of annual automation budget for software
• To allocate 20 per cent of annual automation budget for maintenance
• To allocate 10 per cent of annual automation budget for other equipments.
Priority 2: Library Marketing:
Goals:
1. To promote the library values in terms of systems and services in order to promote awareness among users and donors.
2. To increase the marketing of the library programs regionally, nationally and internationally.
3. To develop the library of Ar-Raniry as a deposit center for internal academic publications.
4. To support the teaching and learning process of Library and Information Science program and to promote its graduates to schools, government and non- government organizations
5. To gain the authorization of library in terms of budgeting and staffing
6. To raise the library budget internally to develop library services and to motivate the staff through incentive or over-time payments.
7. To create the library committee consists of librarians, lecturers, researchers and the institution managers.
8. To plan regular evaluations of all library activities in order to ensure that the programs run properly.
Objectives:
• To increase library publications in various formats, such as brochures, leaflets, banners, reports, quarterly journals, CDs, etc.
• To be involved in the planning of all educational programmes
• To establish a desirable relationship among librarians, users, donors, publishers and governments through regular meetings or events.
• To provide adequate guiding to the layout of the library and the resources held in it.
• To spend 40 per cent of annual marketing budget for library publications
• To spend 30 per cent of annual marketing budget for designing interior and exterior of the library
• To spend 30 per cent of annual marketing budget for assessment market needs.
Priority 3: Acquisitions and collection development
Goals:
1. To provide adequate and relevant library resources in both printed and electronic formats.
2. To maintain an annual weeding to ensure the up to date of the collection.
3. To expand library’s capacity to collect and provides access to multimedia including images, audios, videos and digital formats
Objectives:
• To provide various selection tools, such as books in print, national bibliography, publisher catalogues, etc.
• To spend 20 per cent of the annual materials budget for non-book materials.
• To spend 10 per cent of the annual materials budget for electronic resources
• To spend 10 per cent of the annual materials budget for news papers and magazines.
• To spend 60 per cent of the annual materials budget for monographs and journals.
Priority 3: Training and Staff Development
Goals:
1. To develop the library staff’s abilities in using and implementing technology in all departments.
2. To enhance the library’s staff abilities in serving users.
Objectives:
• To allocate 50 per cent of the human resource development budget to provide staff training in managerial and technical skill such as cataloguing, indexing, and data inputting.
• To provide 50 per cent of human resource development budget for the staff to participate in workshops and seminars in both regional and national.