Effective Library and Information Centre Management 2nd edition

Citation

Rowley, J. (1999), "Effective Library and Information Centre Management 2nd edition", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 5, pp. 2-8. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.5.2.5

According to the author, “This book has been written as a management handbook for people working in information services in small‐to‐medium‐sized organisations, and a management textbook for students in librarianship and information studies.” This second edition seeks to reflect the “bringing together of the disciplines of librarianship, records management and archives, information systems, computing and tele‐communications with a view to promoting an integrated approach”. The book is divided into nine chapters which, respectively, support the information services manager to:

(1)understand their role as a manager;

(2)understand the strategic influences and internal and external environments in which they operate;

(3)profitably and productively manage this environment through the integrated planning of human, information, technology and financial resources;

(4)create a corporate environment that fosters creativity and values expertise;

(5)inspire and get things done through people interaction skills;

(6)manage the information resource within the corporate environment;

(7)care for and manage themselves and others as individuals;

(8)assess risk and manage accordingly; and finally

(9)deliver services to meet customer needs.

This book then seeks to cover all aspects of library and information centre management, embracing the management of human resources, finance, information and operations as well as marketing and strategy planning. This is an ambitious task which the author tackles competently. The scope, balance and structure of the book has been clearly thought through. The book is easy to read, either from cover to cover, or by selecting individual chapters. It would certainly serve the purpose of introducing a range of key concepts.

On the other hand, this book sits uncomfortably between a practitioner′s handbook and a student text. A good student text needs more readings at the end of each chapter, and, indeed, coverage of a range of more recently developed ideas that are not included. The few references that are given are to relatively old sources. This book is not a rigorous digest of recent management thinking and its relevance to library and information centre management. To succeed as a practitioner′s handbook, the book needs a more “active approach”, possibly conveyed by questions, or case studies, or through the style. For example, on the topic of leadership, some key themes are presented, but the reader is not offered action points, or any other clues as to how they might apply these concepts. A deficit for both audiences is the rather scant reference to the library and information centre context. In order to justify its existence, this book needs to apply the management concepts within its pages and not simply rehearse them.

This is the second edition of this book, so the first edition must have found an audience. In packing a wide range of management concepts into one volume, this is a useful introduction but readers then need to move on from this introduction to other texts which offer a more critical and reflective analysis of the concepts and encourage them to think about their application in practice.