Models for Library Management, Decision‐Making, and Planning

We have been indebted to Bob Hayes for several valuable books over the years. This one may prove to be the best of all. It applies the process of scientific management to libraries, in a way that has not to my knowledge been attempted hitherto; it goes beyond previous works by Dougherty and Heinrich (1966) and by Hayes (1993, 1996) himself, and includes a CD‐ROM containing the operating copy of LPM, his Library Planning Model – essentially a set of spreadsheets (5,139 pages of them).

Part 1 considers the nature of scientific management and the use of models, part 2 operational (day‐to‐day) and tactical (resource allocation) issues, and part 3 strategic management (external contexts that affect the library’s future direction). It should help a librarian, for example, to calculate what staff are needed to cope with a given amount of work of various kinds, to decide between acquisition and access, and to determine future strategy in the context of cooperative acquisition. Even apart from the mathematical models, the detailed analysis of issues is useful. The book is immaculately written, and thoroughly researched and referenced (although several references are undated).

It is difficult to review the book as a working tool; it needs to be tested in practice in several libraries. All a reviewer can do at this stage is to judge how good it appears likely to be. My assessment, from reading the text and playing with the CD‐ROM, is that it is very good indeed.

Inevitably, the work has a strong US slant. Much of the data on the CD‐ROM (which also contains some files of academic library data) relates specifically to the USA, and measures of length are not metric. It would be useful if a UK version could be produced.

I have one other reservation – or rather, question. The book will undoubtedly be used in library schools, but will librarians use it in practice? Hayes makes the models as clear and simple to use as he possibly can, but they still look forbidding to librarians who are mostly humanists by education and inclination. And even when they are not, will they have the time and patience to use them? If not, it would not be the first time something intended to aid practice has become an academic exhibit. I very much hope not; but I would like to know in, say, three years’ time what use has been made of the book and whether it has turned out to be as valuable as it promises.