Reorganizing Canadian Libraries: A Giant Step Back from the Front
نویسندگان
چکیده
THENAGGING QcxmoivOF WIO DOES wHxr in libraries has been exacerbated in recent years by significant restructuring initiatives, driven by ongoing budgetary pressures and constant technological change. In the study reported here, senior administrators as well as middle managers and frontline librarians in public and academic library settings were asked to describe the nature of organizational change in their workplaces and how new technologies affect or fit into the pattern of restructuring. BACKC~ROLWD In the 199Os, libraries are undergoing unprecedented change deriving from a cornhination of accelerating prices of library materials and space, an enormous increase in the amount and types of materials available, and rapid developments in electronic technologies (Cummings et al., 1992). Library decision-makers have employed a number of common strategies to manage this change, particularly with respect to the deployment of staff. For example, following the passage of Proposition 13,a limitation on property tax that severely curtailed the revenue of local governments, Willett (1992) found that, although managers in four California libraries varied in their ability to represent their organizations well to funders and maintain good relations with their staff, all ofthem attempted to deal with declining resources by restructuring library services, reducing programs and materiRoma M. Harris, Office of the Dean, Room 120, Strvenson-Lawson Building, University of $Vestern Ontario, Imndon, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B8 Victoria Marshall, Health Sciences Library Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Kewfoundland, Canada A1B 3V6 LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 46, No. 3, Winter 1998, pp. 564-.580 01998The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois HARFUS & MARSHALL/REORGANIZING CAN.4DIAN LIBFUKIES 565 als, cutting back on staff, and deprofessionalizing work (i.e., assigning tasks formerly done by professional librarians to less expensive nonprofessional staf f ) . Similarly, Crist (1994) reported that six academic library administrators, who were interviewed about their approaches to organizational change, used managerial strategies that included reducing thc staff complement, redeploying professional staff away from functional roles such as reference, and establishing work teams in order to flatten the organizational structure (i.e., reducing the proportion of managerial positions and pushing decision-making responsibilities lower in the staff hierarchy). Neal and Steele (1993) described similar methods in the Indiana university libraries, where reorganization was designed on the basis of the assumption that continued budgetary restraint and a move from “automated to electronic status” would involve a “contraction of staff size and greater expectations of staff‘ (p. 93). Each of these examples illustrates that current managerial practice in libraries almost inevitably involves staff redeployment, especially through the assignment of greater responsibility to staff working in the lower-paid, lower-status ranks of the organizational hierarchy. Too,as a result of the use of new technologies, these staffing decisions take place within a context where many of the traditional work roles performed by library workers are being altered significantly. Expectations concerning what an investment in new technologies should achieve for libraries, and the perceptions of library staff as to the impact and efficacy of restructuring initiatives, have not been widely explored. Although several recently published papers suggest that libraries should be organized differently in order to respond to the stresses of a rapidly changing external environment, few provide any empirical evidence to support the efficacy of new organizational forms. Most rely on interviews or mail surveys of a few library directors, case studies of a small group of similar libraries or, in some instances, a description of the change process undertaken in a single library (see for example, Jacobson, 1994; Lawson et al., 1989; Shapiro 8c Long, 1994). In the study reported here, an effort was made to provide a somewhat more substantial base of observations about the perceived connections among restructuring, staffing, and technological change in libraries. The investigation involved faceto-face interviews with directors of academic and public libraries, followed by a survey questionnaire mailed to librarians working in major academic and public library systems across Canada. This project builds on the findirigs of an earlier study of retrenchment in Canadian academic libraries during the 1970s and early 1980s (Auster, 1991). METHOD At the outset of the present study, seven directors of libraries participated in in-depth interviews, including five chief executive officers who head large public library systems in three Canadian provinces, as well as two directors of libraries who are the senior managers of major academic libraries in two Canadian provinces. Following the interviews, 182 academic and public librarians completed a ten-page mail survey questionnaire which explored their perceptions of the impact of library restructuring and their assumptions about the intended uses of new information technologirs.
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Library Trends
دوره 46 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 1998