Creating the Agile Library: A Management Guide for Librarians

Citation

Hendry, J.D. (2000), "Creating the Agile Library: A Management Guide for Librarians", Library Review, Vol. 49 No. 1, pp. 40-48. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2000.49.1.40.8

If the library profession really wants to sign up to the management of change, then this book would help considerably in making a start to such a process. Indeed the title, good and descriptive as it is, does not really do full justice to the stimulus of the text. It is also a highly enjoyable read, per se.

It is a national human tendency, particular amongst those of a cautious, even conservative frame of mind, to conserve, to hold what you have, to “lumber down” as W. Bede Mitchell observes in the preface. Is there any point in the future in erecting new library buildings if we are to see a paperless society, with all information online? We frequently have snap‐shots of that future library when visiting many of the UK’s university libraries: with rooms devoted exclusively to banks of computer workstations, each occupied by a serious‐minded and concentrating student. Does this ICT revolution make the library profession fear its own impending obsolescence, with outdated and cumbersome library buildings and equally cumbersome traditional paper collections? I think not. For have not libraries always had values, principles, and traditions of public service delivery that have been very successful over generations? Do they need fine‐tuning and re‐appraisal, rather than dramatic overhauling, and the abandonment of traditional services? The challenge of this work, the Agile Library, is that it offers us the opportunity to learn to adjust to these admittedly dramatic changes which surround and buffet us and our libraries. We need to adjust to these changes by having a clear understanding of our traditional values, and the ethos of service, and therefore adapt our existing strengths, and question and re‐affirm our core values. I certainly don’t believe that improving efficiency, cutting costs and battening down the hatches will allow us to manage change. Agility of mind, innovation, and public entrepreneurship are more likely tools to cope with continual change. In short, we need to adapt our principles from the past, not abandon them for the future.

There are seven stimulating and thought‐provoking chapters, covering themes such as managing change; the technologically agile library; adapting technologies to connect people to information; outcome measures; users; marketing the library. Perhaps the best is the first chapter, “A better mousetrap for libraries” – potentially useful ideas that can be adapted to fit particular, local situations. Finally, the book is aimed at academic libraries. However, its message, and the attitudes that go with that message, apply across the whole sector of public funded libraries.