Libraries in the Workplace

Citation

Burge, S. (1999), "Libraries in the Workplace", Library Management, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 90-91. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.1999.20.4.90.7

For years, special librarians have bemoaned the fact that there are no detailed statistics available for their sector. Public and academic libraries are well documented in regular compilations, but there has been nothing similar for the special library sector. The Library Association and in particular, its Special Libraries Committee, had run up against the key, and very basic problem, any such survey must face ‐‐ the difficulty of identifying special libraries (or information centres, or resource units or whatever). How do you obtain a representative sample when you can not be sure of the total numbers, given that there is no way of identifying just how many libraries are out there?

The Library and Information Statistics Unit (LISU) based at Loughborough University has come up with an ingenious way round the problem by dividing the special library field into ten sectors, government departmental libraries, government non‐departmental libraries, the voluntary sector, professional associations, law, finance, energy, pharmaÑceuticals, management and information consultants, and food manufacturing. Using a variety of sources and techniques to identify the libraries, the questionnaire achieved an overall response rate of 48 per cent.

The findings are reported sector by sector, with two final chapters that offer whole sector estimates and attempt a comparison between the sectors. Topics covered include the place of the library within the organisation, user populations, staffing, resources, interlending, services provided, and expenditure. Several of the questions seek to measure trends ‐‐ have staffing levels, book collections, etc. increased or decreased in size in recent years?

Some of the tables and the details of statistical methodology may be hard going for those of us without a statistical bent, but the text makes an excellent job of clarifying complex tables and charts, and the structured layout makes it simple to identify specific areas of interest. The similarities between sectors are as fascinating as the differences ‐‐ about a quarter of those organisations surveyed have a corporate information strategy in place and a further third have one under development, but there are no significant differences between the sectors on this, nor on whether the library is responsible for the strategy (about half are).

It may come as no great surprise to discover that law libraries have the most staff (8.4) and voluntary organisations the fewest (two), but it is perhaps surprising that professional associations have more (5.8) than pharmaceuticals (4.9). Fascinating too, that the financial sector is the area least likely to have performance measures in place ‐‐ do they know something the rest of us may only have suspected? The report also throws some light on the vexed question of nomenclature ‐‐ in the legal sector 70 per cent of units are called “Library” or “Library and...” while the “L‐word” was least used in management and consultancy (22 per cent). More than half the units in government, professional associations and energy use “Library” in their titles, less than half in the voluntary sector, finance and pharmaceuticals.

In attempting to describe this volume when I first picked it up I called it a quarry, and further use has confirmed the aptness of this term for me. I am certain that most of us with any interest in special libraries will return to it time and time again to deepen our understanding of a particular sector, make comparisons across them, and identify areas for further research. The work is bound to be of use to other than librarians ‐‐ government Internet managers will be interested to know just what a high proportion of special libraries use the Internet to seek government information.

LISU intends that the work this volume has begun will continue. The introduction states that panels will be established for each sector to provide data on an annual basis, thus permitting regular trend analysis ‐‐ an invaluable resource.