Balancing Visions and Values: An exploration of market rhetoric in Canadian academic library strategic plans

Strategic planning documents are key sites to institutional discourse and reflect the public face of the library. This research explores the extent to which market rhetoric permeates the strategic planning documents of three Canadian academic libraries, and examines the ways in which these institutions engage in market discourse to construct their institutional identity. What are the implications of adopting a customer service stance? What does it mean to be “innovative”? How do personalized services influence ideas of choice? Through content analysis and a critical lens, this exploratory research examines the tension between libraries as public good and libraries as a marketized commodity