Library Policy Management 102: What a Healthy Policy Regime Looks Like

Every library needs policies – and, just as important, it needs a healthy system for making, curating, and amending policies, or what I'm going to call a "policy regime." Let's look at each of those three elements of the policy regime in sequence.

Making Policies

In a healthy library, everyone can answer the question "How do I propose a new policy, and what will happen once I've proposed it?". And they're able to answer that question not just because someone told them once, but because one of the library's policies is "A complete, accurate, and up-to-date policy library is available to, and easily findable and navigable by, every library employee" – and because within that policy library is a policy that explains how policies are made.

Different libraries will of course do things in different ways, but successful libraries (ones that serve their patrons and their institution well, and in which people are happy to work) will all tend to implement policies in ways that adhere to principles like these: