[1115] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Comments on L.Jennings "Regrowing" article in PACS-L News
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Graham, Rutgers U., (908) 93)
Wed Sep 2 11:21:56 1992
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 09:55:49 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: "Peter Graham, Rutgers U., (908) 932-2741" <GRAHAM%ZODIAC.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
From: Peter Graham, Rutgers University
I have just read the article by Lois Jennings in the PACS Review 3.3 (1992)
just distributed on the Internet. It is a concise and stimulating piece on
the need for change in the way staff develop in university research libraries,
and I have a few comments on it.
First, to refresh your memory, I cite the abstract and the instructions as to
how to retrieve the article:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jennings, Lois. "Regrowing Staff: Managerial Priority for theFuture
of University Libraries."
The Public-Access ComputerSystems Review 3, no. 3 (1992): 4-15.
To retrieve this article,send the following e-mail message to
LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 orLISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU: GET JENNINGS
PRV3N3 F=MAIL. [RefereedArticle]
Abstract
University library directors are faced with the strategic problem of
deciding what their libraries will be like in ten years from now and what
will need to have happened within the next five years to make the
transition to the future. A shift is beginning to occur with the rapid
growth of information technology, electronic access to information, and
the scholar's workstation concept. University libraries need to develop
new missions and services as retaliatory innovation to these
developments and shift from a production mode of service to a
facilitator mode. This requires reconceptualizing the role of the university
library, the role of the client, and the role of library staff. New staff
profiles will be needed, and the task of regrowing staff through staff
development will be essential to the successful shaping of the future
library.
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My comments:
1. This is an articulate contribution to the discussion on how research
libraries must change over the next ten years, and takes a welcome
evolutionary and long-term approach. She is University Librarian at Canberra,
but her piece is by no means insular.
2. One of Jennings' main points, by inference, is the need for the new
leadership for research librarianship to come from within. As she puts it, we
need to "regrow" the staff that already exists with only a few new types of
staff coming in from outside for example in certain technical computing roles
(p. 13). She sets out principles for what this regrowing should comprise.
3. She speaks of the staff as being roughly of two kinds: the "champions"
and the others. The champions (in the sense, I think, not of "winners" but of
"those who champion a cause") are risk-takers, flexible, communicators,
initiators, and the like. The others are "the rest of the staff" who are
responsible but follow the lead of others, and who in the long run will
determine the organizational shape and mode of the library.
I like that she does not distinguish in these types between what we would call
the professionals, or library faculty, and the support staffs; with the right
environment and leadership, each of these staff types will throw up champions
and others. As a professional I like to think that there will be more leaders
among them, and I think we have a right to require more of them, but I know
well that change and leadership can come from both groups.
4. She uses the phrase "retaliatory innovation" to describe a step in
institutional growth when its environment has changed such that it is no
longer serving its constituency as well. The term is borrowed from the
marketing literature and I think is unfortunate (as is the tendency in TQM
discussions to speak of library or university "customers").
A research library or similar service institution has no reason for existing
beyond service to its clientele, unlike a commercial organization whose only
reason for existence (despite what it may say) is to make money for its
owners. Thus, while a commercial organization may innovate in "retaliation"
for threats in the marketplace, the metaphor doesn't make sense in the service
environment. "Compensatory innovation", or simply "redesigned service", is
the kind of thinking that is needed. In Jennings' terms, the shift to
provision of electronic information certainly requires rethinking of how we
serve the information needs of our clients--as she has done.
5. Collections: In Jennings' description of what she sees as the new "staff
profile" I am unclear whether her elements are additional or substitutional to
present activities. She lists, for example, the needs for the new staff in
ten years to filter information, provide access using tools, to repackage
information, provide on-demand access, and the like.
Missing from the list is the building of collections in print form. She does
have a paragraph that includes "critical information should be owned by the
library, regardless of...form" but it seems an afterthought. I continue to
think that serious research libraries must indeed continue to collect much as
we have tried to do in the past, and will have to do so for some time--
certainly for the ten years or so she is considering.
Any other reactions? Ms. Jennings?
--pg
