Advances in Library Administration and Organization: Volume 20

Fernandez knew, as did Kenneth Burke to whom Fernandez owed so much, that the fundamental human problem of maintaining what he elsewhere called the “inchoate sense of wholeness” was critically linked to the never-ending dilemma of “the degree to which men can feel the aptness of each other’s metaphors.” And since the publication of “Persuasions and Performances” nearly 30 years ago, a great deal of anthropological, sociological and historical work on “power and resistance,” “hegemony,” and “cultural reproduction and change” can be usefully framed as particular responses to a number of fundamental questions implicit in Fernandez’ quote – When, and under what types of conditions, does any particular “metaphor” or “trope” serve to promote cooperation and social integration? When, and under what types of conditions, does it serve to promote conflict and social disintegration? When and how is the “aptness” of any given “metaphor” or “trope” lost? We believe these to be among the most central, enduring questions in the Human Sciences.

During the 1980s, as organizational uses of information technology (IT) increased in both number of users and amount of use, and as more technology options presented themselves, organizations began to appoint senior personnel as “technology czars.” For executives outside the IT industry, particularly those focused on other aspects of running an enterprise (various business units, finance, human resources, etc.), the IT world seemed to be chaotic, out of control and full of terminological confusion. IT budgets and expenditures were growing rapidly and demands for service continued to increase both in scale and scope. Meanwhile organizational IT units seemed unresponsive, and curiously resistant to change. Central IT units in universities seemed stuck in the mainframe culture of home-grown, customized system development and controlled access at a time when distributed client-server computing offered the promise of low cost, local control and agility. As a result, many local IT support units evolved throughout academic institutions, placing even greater demand on scarce institutional resources and fuelling the potentially explosive tension between central administrative and local authority.

Robert Hauptman first raised awareness about the ethical issues of reference service in 1976. Hauptman, a library school student at the time, did a study on the culpability, or lack thereof, in reference service provided by librarians. In his study, Hauptman posed as a library patron seeking potentially dangerous information. The behavior examined was how librarians respond to the request for material on how to build a bomb that would be powerful enough to blow up a house. Hauptman tried to present himself as a person of questionable character. He used six public and seven academic libraries in this study. Hauptman first made sure that he was speaking to the reference librarian. He then requested information for the construction of a small explosive, requesting specifically the chemical properties of cordite. He then asked for information on the potency of such an explosive, whether or not it could blow up a suburban house (Hauptman, Wilson Library Bulletin, 1976, p. 626).

When a new student enrolls in his/her first class, the ELRC emails a welcome letter outlining the services and resources available to NCU students. The welcome letter includes information on how to access the virtual library site and how to contact a reference librarian. A new student receives the link to the ELRC after establishing a user name and password. The ELRC produces a Learning Resources Handbook, available on the website or in hardcopy upon request. The manual outlines policies and procedures, and introduces resources available through the ELRC. The website provides research tips and how-to pages on database use, Internet searching, research guides, links to online catalogs, general reference tools, Dissertation Center, and FAQs. Additional online tutorials cover study skills and information for students new to the Internet. The Dissertation Center includes strategies on dissertation research, formatting guides, writing resources, dissertation tutorials, and links to other dissertation resources. Course-related subject guides provide links to resources of interest to those enrolled in a particular course. Mentors or students may suggest sites through “Add-a-Resource,” an online form. Learner Affairs and the ELRC provide step-by-step orientation to the web site via telephone to students requesting assistance.

The global proliferation of distance learning programs has become a major phenomenon of our times. So rapid is the growth rate of distance learning options, that statistics on them are rendered out-of-date at the moment of publication. As soon as innovations in media and automation technologies have appeared, their new capabilities have been adapted to distance learning applications, fueling the growth of distance learning programs, and providing marketing tools for the promotion of newly upgraded or newly created distance learning programs and institutions. Rapid growth in a highly competitive market has led to the duplication and overlapping of new distance learning options both within institutions and across institutional and geographical boundaries.

The resource-based view of information was central to the development of an “information economy.” It was economists such as Machlup (1962) and Porat (1977) who pioneered the idea of an “information economy.” Cooper (1983, p. 12) identified Machlup as the first proponent of an “information economy,” a new sector of the economy made up of: …a group of establishments – firms, institutions, organisations, and departments, or teams within them, but also in some instances, individuals and households that produce knowledge, information services or information goods, either for their own use or for use by others (Machlup, 1962, p. 228).Porat (1977) took an alternate approach to that of Machlup (1962) in focusing, not on the producers of knowledge, information services or goods, but on the information activities themselves. Porat’s (1977) fundamental unit of analysis were information activities and these comprised the building blocks of an “information economy.” These information activities included: …all the resources consumed in producing, processing, and distributing information goods or services (Porat, 1977, p. 2).The “information economy” itself has been characterised by a flexibility and dynamism which has raised awareness of the importance of information. However, these two approaches to the “information economy” have resulted in development of a wide and often contradictory range of attributes of information. In particular, the value of information has been extremely difficult to identify or to quantify. As a result, the role of information in improving business performance has been largely unrecognised. Too often senior managers have focused on the costs of information rather than the benefits.

Direct, administer, manage. All of these are words applied to those who lead libraries, and they are usually applied interchangeably. But not only do they have unique definitions, they each carry a distinct implication for library managers and the organizations they lead. “Direct” means to provide a forward-thinking grounding for action in an organization (and this word’s meaning is most closely synonymous with “lead”). “Administer” suggests dispensing or carrying out, for instance, policy. The word is in some ways distant from the creation of policy or direction. “Manage” frequently is limited to the performance or overseeing of tasks on a daily basis. None of these words is false or pejorative when applied to the library, but each is limited in some important ways. The genuine work of guiding actions in libraries is actually an iterative balance of all three of the functions denoted by these words. If the terms are conflated in the everyday usage of our profession, from where does the confused usage come? Is understanding of the aforementioned balance common in practice? How clearly is the range and complexity of action communicated in educational programs? (Terminology presents some problems; for ease of expression and reading, the whole complex of action will be referred to as management, understanding that the usage here encompasses all requisite connotations.)

In the last twenty years, the women’s movement has resulted in a greater representation of women in once male-dominated venues, such as the job force and higher education. Women currently represent nearly 43% of those in the United States labor market, and it is expected that four in every five women ages 25–54 will be employed by the year 2000 (Hoyt, 1988; U.S. Department of Labor, 1995). Despite women’s increasing participation in the world of work, they continue to choose occupations that represent the stereotypically feminine range of occupations, meaning less pay and less status (Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987). For example, women are still underrepresented in engineering, architecture, and the physical sciences (Eccles, 1994; U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau, 1995). These gender-based occupational patterns are also evidenced in college enrollment; women continue to comprise the majority in academic majors that are considered traditionally feminine, such as early childhood, elementary, and secondary education, library science, nursing, and home economics, whereas men are the predominant majors in physics, chemistry, architecture, and engineering (Bartholomew & Schnorr, 1994; National Science Foundation, 1990).

The ARL E-Metrics Project is a key development in the ongoing effort to quantify and better understand the impact of emerging information technologies on library collections and services. It has provided the Association with a new measurement model – to which individual libraries have committed significant resources and effort beyond the Association structure and budget – to further develop and test in Phase Three of the project.

Traditionally, libraries have collected statistical data about their collections, acquisitions, lending, and inter-lending activities. In time, the number of statistics was enlarged and differentiated, and in many cases, it now comprises several hundred data points. These range from the number of incunabula or microforms in the collection, the expenditure on preservation or buildings to the number of issues made, claims and reservations placed or visits made to exhibitions and special events. These statistics are, for the most part, collected nationally, but libraries also tend to collect additional statistics, (e.g. for special tasks and activities like legal deposit right, special collections, or services for special user groups).

Academic libraries have endured rapid change in the past two decades that has had repercussions on how they manage their organization and deliver library services. Skyrocketing costs, especially for journals, explosive growth in new technologies, fiscal exigencies caused by a tightening of public financing of most academic institutions, demands for greater accountability, and the onslaught of electronic delivery of networked information, are just some of the major obstacles libraries are encountering (Lubans, 1996; Riggs, 1993; Shaughnessy, 1987). Customers of academic libraries are increasingly less satisfied because of limited resources and the difficulties they encounter in accessing printed material in a traditional library facility (Doughtery, 1992). The emergence of textual materials in electronic form has added a new dimension to this discontent. While such resources have the potential for meeting the information needs more dynamically, the costs for information have been exorbitant, particularly since full electronic texts have not been sufficient in coverage to supplant printed resources (Tenopir, 1993). These phenomena require academic libraries to use a more integrated and flexible approach to problem solving (Gapen, Hampton & Schmitt, 1993).

Gail Bader is Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. A cultural anthropologist, Bader’s research interests include educational anthropology, the cultural construction of work, computing and technology, and U.S. and Japanese culture.John M. Budd is Professor and Associate Director of the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri – Columbia. He is the author of numerous journal articles and books, including The Academic Library and Knowledge and Knowing in Library and Information Science.Bambi Burgard has served as Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs/Student Achievement at the Kansas City Art Institute since May 2002. Upon completion of her undergraduate education, she began doctoral study in counseling psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she earned her Ph.D. in 1999. She completed her predoctoral and postdoctoral internships at the University of Missouri-Kansas City counseling center.Harvey R. Gover is on the library faculty of Washington State University (WSU) Libraries and is the Assistant Campus Librarian for WSU Tri-Cities. Formerly, he was Public Services Librarian, Tarleton State University, a branch campus of Texas A&M. He was a principal author of the 2000 edition of ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services.William Graves III is Associate Professor of Humanities at Bryant College in Smithfield, Rhode Island. A linguistic anthropologist, Graves is interested in the diverse roles that language and communication play in social and cultural change. He has conducted fieldwork on issues of social and cultural change among Native Americans, in diverse organizational settings in the U.S., in enterprises undergoing privatization in Russia and, most recently, among small-scale entrepreneurs in Belarus.José-Marie Griffiths served as the Chief Information Officer at the University of Michigan and Vice Chancellor for Information Infrastructure at the University of Tennessee. She was responsible for strategic IT planning; the development and implementation of academic and administrative computing, telecommunications and networking activities; and IT alliances with external organizations. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her contributions to information science, the development of the IT industry, and support for women in computing. She currently holds an endowed chair and professorship in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and is Director of the University’s Sara Fine Institute for Interpersonal Behavior and Technology.John B. Harer has been a school and academic librarian for over twenty-seven years. As an academic librarian, he has held various positions in access services, reference, and personnel administration. He is currently the Director of the Library at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC.Donna Meyer’s career has included management of computer labs, teaching computer skills, designing curricula that integrated information skills into core subject areas, creating web sites, and managing library collections. She currently works as Director of Library Resources at Northcentral University in Prescott, Arizona, providing quality online graduate research services.Rush Miller has been Hillman University Librarian and Director of the University Library system at the University of Pittsburgh for eight years. He serves as co-chair for the Association of Research Libraries e-Metrics Project. Miller is active in the profession and writes regularly on library management, international librarianship, diversity, digital library content and e-Metrics.James M. Nyce, a cultural anthropologist, is interested in how information technologies are used in and can change workplaces and organizations, particularly in medicine and higher education. A docent at Linköping University, Nyce’s research interests include the historical, social aspects of library and information science, the design and evaluation of information systems, and information use in science and medicine. Nyce is Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas, and Visiting Associate Professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis.Charles Oppenheim is Professor of Information Science at Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK. His main professional interest is where the law interacts with information services. He is also interested in knowledge management, measuring the value and impact of information, citation studies, bibliometrics, national and company information policy, the electronic information and publishing industries, ethical issues, chemical information handling, patents information and policy issues related to digital libraries and the Internet.Roswitha Poll is chief librarian of the University and Regional Library Münster. From 1991 to 1993 chair of the German Association of Academic Librarians, since 1997 chair of the German Standards Committee for Information and Documentation. She chaired the IFLA group for the handbook on performance measurement in libraries and is now convener of the ISO working group for the International Standard of Library Statistics and member of the ISO group for performance measurement. She is working in national and international groups on collection preservation, quality management, statistics and cost analysis in libraries.Mary Jane Rootes is a Public Services librarian at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia. She worked previously at the Pitts Library of Andrew College in Cuthbert, Georgia.Sherrie Schmidt is the Dean of University Libraries at Arizona State University. She began her tenure at ASU as Associate Dean of Library Services in 1990 and was named Dean in 1991. Prior to that, she worked at Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, the FAXON Company, the University of Texas at Dallas, AMIGOS, the University of Florida, and Ohio State University. Most of her professional activities relate to the use of technology in libraries.Joan Stenson is a Research Associate in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK, where she is currently undertaking a doctorate.Richard Wilson is Professor of Business Administration and Financial Management at Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK. He has inter-disciplinary interests in the valuation of information assets. His publications reflect his research interests in management control, financial control, marketing control and strategic control.