Advances in Library Administration and Organization: Volume 22

The tension between what researchers can deliver, what they regard as reputable knowledge, and what practitioners “need to know” is one that is characteristic of all the “half” or “quasi” professions. We can, for example, trace out this tension in social work, nursing, and, to some extent, in business and architecture. But perhaps nowhere is the relationship between “science” and practice as problematic as it is in library and information science (LIS). There are any number of historical and ideological reasons we can invoke to account for this. However, no matter how we attempt to explain it or to “place” it into context (one gambit has been to tie this division to the collapse of University of Chicago's experiment in library science education), the fact is that it remains. Not only does it continue, it has become an invariant feature, a constant, in the intellectual landscape of the discipline. It is, we could also argue, a divide we see little hope of resolving in any kind of definitive way.

The definition of the collection employed in this essay accounts for it as an assemblage of information sources made accessible systematically in any format by the library or information center for the purposes of the community that is to intended to serve.

Higher education, and in particular libraries, have changed significantly over the last decade due to the adoption of technological advancements such as the Internet and the World Wide Web. The multitude of ways patrons can interact with librarians and library resources has been only the latest step in a very long process which started with traditional snail mail and the phone. As educators, librarians have always been interested in using new tools to improve services. These services are increasingly being made available to patrons who do not physically enter a library building. This paper looks at what library services are currently being offered to students at a distance in order to better plan for the future.

The first university was founded in Italy during the early 1110s. Since that time, education has not changed much. Early college education was based on communication, a continuous dialogue between teacher and learner. College education today is based heavily on communication with the only real change, in some instances, being the method in which the teacher and learner communicate.

Marion has just taken on the directorship of a joint university/public library. You, as her protégé, are interested in observing how she approaches the new venture. You are curious about what information she will gather, whose advice she will seek, how she will figure out the expectations others have of her and the library, how she will prioritize the many challenges before her, and how she will negotiate her leadership role with the staff. In other words, you want to study Marion's organizational sensemaking.

It has been suggested that “space and artifacts constitute systems of communication which organizations build up within themselves” (Gagliardi, 1992a, b, p. vi) and reflect the cultural life within that organization. This is a study of how the “landscape” of a public library (“Library X”), as an information retrieval system, relates to the values of the people who created it. The efforts here are geared towards understanding the physical instantiation of institutional culture and, more specifically, institutional values as they are reflected through the artifact.

Why does the idea of marketing generate such negative reactions from many in the academic library world? Research on the word “marketing” in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) reveals that usage of the term can be traced back to 1561 when it meant simply “to buy or sell” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2004, http://dictionary.oed.com/). As early as 1884, the meaning began to change to “bringing or sending (a commodity) to market,” which encompasses not just the selling of a product, but the “systematic study of all the factors involved in marketing a product” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2004, http://dictionary.oed.com/). Is it the idea of “selling” that offends so many in libraries? Or do some dislike the suggestion of libraries having “products” much as companies do?

Like other public and nonprofit leaders, academic librarians face multiple challenges (McGregor, 2000) such as tight and declining budgets, technology-savvy users, higher performance expectations from clients and overseers, complex production networks, rapid technological change, and increased competition (Stoffle, Allen, Morden, & Maloney, 2003). These challenges require new leadership roles, skill sets, and techniques for academic librarians, as well as restructuring the library organization. A discussion of their changed roles and organizations contextualizes the discussion of how academic librarians should meet the challenges of a changed service environment (Stoffle et al., 2003). However, a void in the discussion is the failure to suggest a leadership role best suited to governing complex academic libraries, as well as the lack of a coherent strategic framework to guide academic librarians in formulating, implementing, and assessing strategy to create additional value (Gilreath, 2003).

For over two decades, we have known from melding fertility and immigration data, that the population of the United States would become steadily more diverse. Throughout the 1990s it was reported that one in four persons in the nation was a minority. By the time we entered the new millennium, that figure increased to one in three. Now it is predicted that in the year 2030, the emerging majority of Americans will be people of color. No matter the type of library or information agency, in this century all will face the challenge of providing service to population within the context of an entirely new order of pluralism.

Melissa Cox Norris is the Director of Library Communications at the University of Cincinnati. She is a founding member of the OhioLINK Marketing Task Force. Prior to joining the University of Cincinnati in 2002, she worked for three years at the University of Virginia Library as the Director of Communications and Publications.