Management Basics for Information Professionals

Citation

Gorman, G.E. (2000), "Management Basics for Information Professionals", Library Management, Vol. 21 No. 9, pp. 501-508. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.2000.21.9.501.6

Management texts proliferate like rabbits in the Australian outback, and with an equally deleterious effect – they lead the reader to believe that the methods of commercial management and economic rationalism are viable in the service sector, with library users becoming “customers” and librarians (at all levels) termed “managers” or some other euphemism for the dreaded “L word” – my current favourite is “customer services manager” in place of “reference librarian”. As I have maintained in another forum (see LibraryLINK at www.mcb.co.uk/liblink), people who come to libraries are not mere customers, librarians are not mere managers, and libraries are not a mere industry. A manager is a lesser breed, a non‐professional, whereas librarians are professionals in every sense, and our users are clients, people with whom we have a responsible, professional relationship. Managers are servants of organisations, and for them the bottom line is profit; librarians are servants of users, and for them the bottom line is quality service – the right information for the right person at the right time. When this is forgotten, as it tends to be in libraries, universities, health care, social services, then we are the poorer for it in two senses. First, we as information professionals lose sight of our calling; second, our users receive less personalised and therefore less adequate service.

Having said all that, it is still necessary for librarians to know how to manage their resources (collections, staff, budgets, users), and to do this in a way that is sensitive to the service ethos of librarianship. Therefore, librarians need management texts that help them view management from within the context of professional service. Management Basics for Information Professionals is one such text. Librarians also need management texts that are relatively jargon free and certainly geographically neutral – we really do not need to know how management is practised in East Paducah, USA, but rather how it can be practised anywhere, what are the enduring principles and common practices that can be contextualised in the workplace. Again, Management Basics for Information Professionals is such a text.

It is a successor to Evans’ 1983 book, Management Techniques for Librarians, and has an international cast of authors: Evans from the USA, Layzell Ward from the UK and occasionally from Australia, Rugaas from Northern Europe. This gives the work its cosmopolitan flavour, although it is still heavily American, as one would expect from a US publisher. It seems that, internationally, management is taught in much the same way, as reflected in this book. There are three parts, reflecting the three parts of most management courses: background and theory (three chapters), management skills (ten chapters), management of resources (five chapters). Two of the chapters, that on the history of LIS management concepts in Part 1 and that on likely trends in Part 3, are probably unnecessary, the first because it adds little to our understanding of practice in a practical book; the second because, frankly, it says little. The remaining chapters are commendable for the way in which they introduce, explicate and summarise ideas; making management seem like the common‐sense discipline that it is. This, however, is rare in management texts, which tend masterfully to obfuscate and tell us what we already know in language that we do not understand.

Chapters in Parts 2 and 3 cover marketing, innovation and change, decision making, planning, authority and responsibility, delegation, performance and quality, communication, motivation, leadership, personnel, finance, technology, physical facilities. The best of these are Chapters 7 (The Planning Process), 10 (Performance, Quality and Control), 15 (Fiscal Management) and 16 (Managing Technology). These are selected for special comment for two reasons. First, the content of Chapters 7 and 10 is often treated so badly in LIS management texts as to be incomprehensible – pure management jargon in the best MBA tradition. Second, the content of Chapters 15 and 16 is often overlooked entirely, or treated cursorily in other texts. The authors of this volume have shown their true mettle in this suite of chapters, making matters of planning and quality control comprehensible and almost interesting and treating money and technology with the practical respect both deserve. Much the same can be said of other chapters.

As this is a student text, the authors have taken care to provide appropriate learning devices throughout: “For further thought” and “Tip” boxes where relevant, to highlight important points or encourage reflection; chapter summaries, recommendations for further reading (not always in the US literature, either); tables and figures. What is lacking, however, and this is a curious omission considering the authors’ cumulative experience in the classroom, is an opening statement of expected outcomes for each chapter. Especially droll are Maurice Line’s pithy management aphorisms that open most chapters – one senses the Layzell Ward sense of humour at work here – and do so to telling effect. Thus “staff can be overworked and understretched at the same time” at the beginning of a chapter on performance sets the scene most admirably. Throughout there is a realistic approach to management and what it can achieve, rather than the pompous and self‐righteous tone of so many other management books of this type.

In sum, I will be recommending Management Basics for Information Professionals to colleagues and students as a valiant and largely successful attempt to introduce management principles and practices to new generations of aspiring librarians.