Advances in Librarianship (Volume 33)

Citation

Ole Pors, N. (2012), "Advances in Librarianship (Volume 33)", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 68 No. 6, pp. 882-884. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411211277091

This volume of advances in librarianship includes six articles organized in two sections. The first section is named is named Library Operations and Management and it includes three articles. The second section named Trends, Issues and Lessons Learned also includes three articles. The editor has a good preface contextualizing the articles. The book has an author index and a subject index. The book is hardcover, the paper quality good and the print easy to read.

Jonathan Warwick has written the first article on the topic operations research (OR). In the seventies it was a rather significant topic especially in the academic library research area and it resulted in some very good and significant research. The mathematical‐based research directed towards modelling decision‐making processes declined and it is interesting that it is taken up again with a discussion considering its possible future in library and information research and practice. Warwick gives an informative overview of OR in general and its use or application in the library and information sector. The overview covers several decades and it highlights some of the very important work that has been done within the OR framework. Warwick also discusses reasons for the decline of OR in the library and information sector. The decline started around 1980. Several reasons can explain the decline of OR in librarianship. First of all, OR is based on rather advanced mathematical models and it has been difficult to persuade librarians to use models that are unable to handle or cast light on important issues not quantifiable? Further, OR is not an easy instrument to adapt into strategic decision making processes.

The author continues the analysis of OR to look at some paradigms that intend to develop OR in a direction where it can contribute to solve or help solve real life messy problems and situations. The author is inspired by Habermas and he makes on this basis an interesting distinction between hard and soft OR. The soft OR also takes social and personal perspectives into account.

This has given rise to a new orientation of OR and it is to a certain degree now occupied with a problem structuring method PSM. The modelling is orientated towards fostering of dialogue, negotiations, reflecting and learning among stakeholders. The author offers good examples of this new paradigm in an exploration of examples from the everyday life of an academic library. It is a very interesting and useful article that clearly depicts a very remarkable development of a scientific field and it is adaption to an environment in rapid change.

The second article also explores a topic that just a few years ago was rather influential in the management literature but it appears at present that the terminology has been incorporated in the extensive knowledge management literature. The topic is intellectual capital and it is of course still a very relevant topic in relation to management. The authors of the article come from the Ionian university in Corfu, Greece. The main focus in the article concerns the management of intellectual capital in libraries. It is in many ways a very solid piece of research including a very comprehensive literature review together with classifications of important and inter‐related concepts. This article ought to be of interest for library leaders and librarians as they work in organizations that are very knowledge intensive and where much of the resources are human. The article offers an extensive analysis of valuation issues for intellectual capital in libraries.

The third and last article in the first section focuses on leaders and leadership problems in libraries. The paper focus on US library directors and how they obtained the leadership qualifications needed to run a library. The article is based on a small‐scale survey including less than 50 respondents. However, the results are rather convincing and it is clear that only a minority of the respondents obtained any form of leadership qualifications during the time they studied. The majority have obtained their leadership skills through other channels. This situation is probably more or less global and it raises the interesting question about how it would be best and most effective to develop leadership capabilities in people leading libraries and information organizations. One question that needs to be answered is if a library director needs to have an educational background from the library and information field or if there are good reasons to believe that a library would benefit from leaders with a general management and leadership background. This question is discussed around the world and the problem is of course that library directors lead organizations of very varied size and in smaller libraries they often have to participate in daily operations.

The three articles in the first section discuss and analyse different aspects of management problems and the one thing that relates the topics is probably connected to leadership.

The three papers in the second section discuss very different topics. One paper is about Native American Tribal libraries. Another one is about library and information science education in Australia and the last one deal with the use of electronic texts in humanities research.

The article is interesting as it analyses how libraries can contribute with valuable services in communities originally based on oral tradition. The success of library services is obviously connected to the presence of a dedicated librarian and support from the local council. The research was conducted with interviews with key persons in a small number of tribal communities. Five librarians were surveyed through a year. The research further indicated the importance of establishing partnership. The reviewer found this piece of research stimulating and fascinating because it contains a vast amount of information on traditions, history of Native Americans and the efforts of transforming oral traditions. The results from the research have a wider interest and can be inspirational for all that works with and within communities with strong oral traditions.

The next article is concerned with library and information science education in Australia and it could sound a bit boring. However, this is not a paper about how things are done. The objective of the article is much more analytical placing educational questions in a wider historical, social and educational context forming a framework. The article uses the historical background to emphasize and pose pertinent questions to the relationship between education and the ever‐changing job‐market and the approach the article has demonstrate clearly that reasonable changes in educational structures will benefit from an analysis of the history of the educational system.

The last article is concerned with the use of e‐texts in research projects in the humanities. The article is the largest consisting of over 60 pages. The text is based on an intensive research investigating a small number of researchers in the humanities in Australia and the researchers have been interviewed in two stages. Their work has been analysed and they have also been videotaped during sessions. The focus of the research was to investigate how researchers interacted with e‐texts and which contributions e‐texts offered and further to look a bit into the future. The article contains a very professional piece of research and it is contextualised through a very well‐defined discussion of what e‐texts are. This is very useful. The research comes up with several results. One of the interesting results is the importance of net‐chaining in the research process. Further, the article has an illuminative distinction between the supportive and substantive role e‐texts play in the research process.

It is obvious that the reviewer really appreciate this collection of articles on very different topics. To be honest, the articles do not form wholeness and they are not really interconnected in a thematic manner. The one thing they have in common is that they all represent very fine research with perspectives. Further, they all succeed in contextualising their topics and it means that readers without prior knowledge of one of the topics will find interesting information. To sum up, this book has been a pleasure to read and it should appeal to librarians with wide‐ranging curiosity in relation to professional topics.