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In cooperation with the Danish Union of Librarians in 2001 a comprehensive survey of Danish library directors was conducted. There is a growing societal concern about management and leadership qualities and it is evident that leadership attributes are becoming increasingly important in the information sector. The survey focuses on a whole array of topics connected with leadership qualities and perceptions of different future challenges. In this paper the focus is on job satisfaction among library directors. Job satisfaction is a central topic for motivational theories and some of the more major of these are evaluated in relation to our findings. The analysis correlates job satisfaction with a number of both extrinsic and intrinsic factors and the existence of major differences between these factors and levels of job satisfaction among the library directors is found. Some of these factors appear to be connected with the level of activity in the library. The context of the paper is the problems of recruiting the right kind of staff. Included in the context is the need to create attractive workplaces.

This article reports the results on a particular management issue of a recent Danish qualitative interview survey on experiences with fee‐based public library services. It also includes a systematic comparison between underlying values, revealed through the survey, and the results of a recent large scale survey of Danish public sector values. The article outlines the evolution of the library charging discourse and investigates to what extent and how values associated with fee‐based services differ and resemble the general public sector values. In particular, it will be examined to what extent fee‐based services facilitate the penetration of New Public Management oriented values into public libraries. Finally, management practices concerning fee‐based services are considered, focusing, in particular, on possible discrepancies between expressed values and actual practice.

This paper contains some of the main results of a recent 2003 Danish qualitative survey on opinions and experiences of fee‐based services among public libraries. Current considerations and reflections are reviewed, experiences with specific public library products and services and customers segments analysed and success factors and primary results identified. This study, among others, asserts that the discourse on fee‐based library services has fundamentally changed since the 1970s and that fee‐based services today are more likely to be seen as facilitators of organisational change, human resource development, learning, quality and the like than income and profit generation mechanisms. A balanced view on the effects on organisational culture and the traditional Danish cooperating library system suggests that fee‐based services in certain respects seem to stimulate knowledge sharing.

Presents some of the main results from a comprehensive survey conducted in 2001 into leadership and management in Danish libraries. The survey focused on leadership roles, perception of future challenges, perception of educational needs and the employment of different leadership tools. The main theme for the paper is an analysis of the data in relation to new public management and value‐based management. The paper starts with a theoretical framework that emphasises the powers that create a certain sort of cross‐pressure. The broad concepts of new public management and value‐based management are outlined. The paper analyses the leaders’ knowledge of leadership tools, classified according to their place in either new public management or value‐based management. The paper also analyses the perception of future leadership roles. It was found that library leaders tend to perceive future roles as being greatly oriented towards people and towards values and see themselves as a kind of catalyst for change.

The aim of this article is to identify the main approaches and discuss their perspectives, including their strengths and weaknesses in, especially, public library contexts. The purpose is also to present and discuss the results of a recent – 2014 – Danish library user segmentation project using computer-generated clusters. Compared to traditional marketing texts, this article also tries to identify users segments or images created by the library profession itself. Segmentation of users can help libraries in the process of understanding user similarities and differences. Segmentation can also form the basis for selecting segments as target users and for developing tailored services for specific target segments. Thus, several approaches and techniques have been tested in library contexts.

Basically, the article is built upon a literature review concerning different approaches to user segmentation in, especially, public library context from approximately 1980 till now (May 2014).

The article reveals that – at least – five different principal approaches to user segmentation have been applied by the library sector during the past 30-35 years. Characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches are identified, discussed and evaluated.

When making decisions on future library user surveys, it is certainly an advantage, concerning the ability to make qualified decision, to know what opportunities that are at hand for identifying important segments.

Some of the approaches have been treated individually in the library literature; however, it is probably the first time that the professions own user images and metaphors are dealt with in a user segmentation context.

Several recent library innovations seem to make professional and clerical staff superfluous such as automated loan and delivery equipment, staff-less libraries open in 80 hours a week, and virtual services, enabling users to search the library catalogue and make reservations of library materials from their home address. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether such developments will necessarily lead to a situation where public libraries become self-service institutions or to what extent self-service and innovative staff-intensive library services can develop and co-exist. Furthermore, the paper will examine what challenges library leaders face and what they can do, and actually have done, to handle staff resistance and other related problems to the benefit of both the users, the local communities, and also, the staff, in particular, when introducing new and innovative services.

The paper is based on the author's evaluations of two recent Danish library development projects. Both evaluations are based on empirical data and apply quantitative (questionnaires) as well as qualitative (interviews, observations) methods.

The findings reveal that staff attitudes toward staff-less libraries, and – more surprising – also toward more staff-intensive practices have been somewhat reluctant and skeptical. The paper also presents leadership initiatives which have proved to handle such resistances constructively.

The paper contains a first-hand report on the results of a recent (2011-2012) unique, full-scale, Danish public library development project, investigating the experiences with pro-active and guest-customer relationships within a public library setting.

This paper contains an analysis of the international orientation among Danish librarians and directors. The empirical base for the paper is two comprehensive surveys of librarians and directors. Through cluster analysis, in total, four groups of librarians and directors are formed with a distinctly different international or non‐international orientation and the differences between the groups are characterised. The discussion of the results takes place in relation to Hofstede’s theory of cultural differences. Parts of his theory can be confirmed through the analysis, and it is evident that a specific Scandinavian leadership style exists, with which library managers conform. It is demonstrated that internationally‐oriented librarians differ from non‐internationally‐ or nationally‐oriented librarians in some of their attitudes towards unions and the role of the library in society.

There are similarities between information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM), but the latter is wider in scope and includes (especially) aspects of process and learning which are not major concerns of information management as generally understood. This article presents theoretical considerations on both similarities and differences between IM and KM, and summarises the points made into a conceptual model of basic KM processes. It is emphasised that KM operates in a quite different way from IM and that management must see ‘knowledge’ in a much wider sense than that of document storage and retrieval per se. The point is made that a knowledge management perspective on business processes, training and achievement of business objectives is relevant in a different way from IM which has up till now been used in an information service way to refer to repository‐based systems. This point is illustrated by using total quality management (TQM) as an example. The examination of TQM‐based management tools reveals that the application of these tools is interesting from a KM point of view, having significant consequences especially in terms of knowledge creation, accumulation and sharing.

Modern IT‐based loans and delivery automation systems combined with video surveillance and monitoring cameras have enabled new service opportunities and models in public libraries. In Denmark, staffless public libraries have appeared recently in many local communities. This article aims to report on the Danish experiences with open libraries in terms of local community characteristics, their use – visits and loans, characteristics of the users in terms of sex and age and, finally, an analysis of critical success factors revealed in association with open libraries.

The data upon which this article is based were collected during the autumn of 2011 by the Danish Center for Library and Media through an electronic questionnaire to all 97 of Denmark's municipalities.

The origins of the concept of open libraries were shaped by the opportunities made by a combination of the technological development of automated loans and delivery systems and electronic surveillance techniques. The open library concept has been described as a success in terms of growth rates of visits and increasing number of loans.

The article shows that the concept has been quite successful in terms of use and local support and that it has strengthened the position of the local public libraries in the local communities.

The paper aims to report on a Danish Web 2.0 user training project from 2009. Besides, reporting the main results of the project, the paper discusses some broader perspectives concerning social media in library context. Many public and academic libraries worldwide have, inspired by the American “23 Things” Web 2.0 training program, been involved in training and educating both of their internal staff and of their users. The key questions are: whether concepts like “23 Things” and the like are likely to contribute to solving the problems of the computer illiterate segments of the population and whether Web 2.0, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the like represent subjects which should be legitimately taught as part of professional public and academic library activities.

Based on systematic evaluation of public library-based social media courses, inspired by the “29 Things” concept, targeted at users.

The article points out that it is questionable whether the “23 Things” project, as based on principles of self-directed learning, ownership for one’s own learning and similar popular notions, which fit very well into the taste and preferences of computer literate middle-class individuals, will also work among computer illiterate citizens. Concerning the second key question, the article points out that only a few critical opinions are against social media in libraries and that the presence of social media is legitimized through different reasons, including marketing, learning and higher-order purposes.

The findings of the Danish public library social media courses in 2009 have not been reported before.