Mission and Organizational Values

WiLS (formally Wisconsin Library Services) is a non-profit membership organization that facilitates collaborative projects and services to save our members time and money and to advance library service, primarily in the state of Wisconsin. Most of our members are libraries, but we also work with cultural institutions, government agencies, and other non-profits to develop partnerships and projects.

If you’d like to become a WiLS member, it’s free and comes with all perks and no strings. Join WiLS!

WiLS' Mission

We believe libraries, cultural institutions, and their partners make the world a better place.

We build relationships and provide services so they can do more with their time and money.

We help our members turn ideas into action.

Organizational Values

We work in the interest of our members. We take their missions very seriously, we respect and value their time and money, and we do our best to deliver services that are effective, efficient, and affordable.

We are confident in the resilience of our members. Our members have always overcome challenges and we believe that they will continue to do so in the future. We approach our work, despite adversity, with the positive spirit of possibility.

We promote new ideas and experimentation. We encourage our members to try new things, we promote members’ experimental endeavors, and we demonstrate this value through our own internal practices.

We strive to do the best we can. We are honest with ourselves and others. We are reflective about what we do and who we are as an organization. We assume good intentions in our interactions with members and partners, we recognize when we can do better, and we do our best to improve.

We know that we are stronger together. Our community is an ecosystem that thrives when we recognize our value to one another. We work to connect members and provide opportunities for collaboration in order to grow and protect all parts of our ecosystem.

We are committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion. We believe our community is stronger when people with a wide array of experiences and perspectives come together. We strive to create thoughtful and respectful environments where those interactions can take place. As individuals and as an organization, we examine our own practices and biases to live up to our commitment.

We stand up for the American Library Association’s Code of Ethics and Freedom to Read statement. We are champions for the professional ethics of our library members and do work that is consistent with those ethics.

How We Live Our Values in Our Work

It is important to us that our values aren’t just nice ideas that live on paper. We work hard to bring them into all aspects of our work, from big decisions to day-to-day tasks. Here are just a few ways we have been putting our values into action:

In the best interest of our members, we design our services around affordability. For example, many small public libraries can’t afford a custom strategic plan, so we developed cohorts of libraries who work with us and work together to create their plans which saves us time and saves members money.
Each WiLS staff member is encouraged to spend 2% of their time on a pro bono project – a project for which cost recovery is not needed or expected – that benefits our member community in some way. Past pro bono projects include our Social Justice Spotlight, the Wisconsin Fine-Free Library Snapshot data dashboard, our work with the Wisconsin Latinx History Collective, and more.
Responding to an increase in challenges to books about Black and queer lives, WiLS issued a statement supporting the equity and anti-racism work that we know our members are deeply engaged in. Additionally, WiLS is an organizational partner with Unite Against Book Bans, an anti-censorship initiative of the American Library Association, and WiLS staff serve on WLA committees and special interest groups that support Intellectual Freedom.
In March 2025, WiLS issued a statement in support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and detailed the ways in which the IMLS has helped WiLS move the field of librarianship forward, in response to Executive Order 14238.
WiLS and the WiLS Board provide the Ideas to Action Fund, a grant program designed to help libraries and cultural organizations launch or expand their projects with seed money of up to $5000 and basic project management support. WiLS believes investing in individual organizations’ good ideas can benefit the whole member community through collaboration and innovation. The application period opens each spring.