Strategic Management for Public Libraries: A Handbook

by Robert M. Hayes, Virginia A. Walter

Overview

Drawing on Hayes's previous work in Strategic Management for Academic Libraries, this professional reference addresses the unique circumstances and needs of public libraries and provides thorough guidance on how to manage change successfully in the community library environment. The volume provides a conceptual framework for strategic management, identifies its major concerns and relationships to the tactical and operational management of public libraries, discusses the particular problems and needs of community libraries, and details the assessment of the library's strategic position. The final section of the book offers extensive practical information for formulating and implementing strategic management in the public library setting.

Public libraries must operate in a time of increasing change, both within the library community and throughout the larger social and economic environments in which the library must function. All community libraries, regardless of size, must prepare for the strategic changes that are occurring, such as the National Information Infrastructure and the onrush of electronic information. Planning for change is not enough. Change must be managed strategically, through the library's recognition of its needs and objectives in relationship to the shifting contexts in which it must operate.

This professional reference is a comprehensive guide to the strategic management of change in community libraries. Drawing on Hayes's work in Strategic Management for Academic Libraries, this volume addresses the unique circumstances and needs of public libraries and provides thorough guidance on how to manage change successfully in the community library environment. The volume provides a conceptual framework for strategic management, identifies its major concerns and relationships to the tactical and operational management of public libraries, discusses the particular problems and needs of community libraries, and details the assessment of the library's strategic position. The final section of the book offers extensive practical information for formulating and implementing strategic management in the public library setting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313289545
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/24/1996
Series:	Libraries Unlimited Library Management Collection
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

ROBERT M. HAYES is the former Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at UCLA. He holds a doctorate in mathematics and has published several books on libraries and automated information systems. He is the author of Strategic Management for Academic Libraries: A Handbook (Greenwood, 1993).

VIRGINIA A. WALTER is Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA, where she teaches courses in management and library services and programs for children. She has worked as a children's services coordinator, principal librarian, senior librarian, and young adult librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library. She has published numerous articles, and her books include three professional works for librarians and a children's book.

Table of Contents

Preface
Concepts
Definitions, Objectives, Alternatives
Top Management Responsibility
Strategic Issues for the Community Library
Contexts
The Context of Community Problems and Needs
The Context of Users and Their Needs
The Context of the Environment
Techniques for Assessment
Assessing the Strategic Position
Visualizing the Future
Costing Library Operations and Services
Fine Structure of Community Information Economies
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

In a work that is both an update and companion to his Strategic Management for Academic Libraries (Greenwood, 1993), Hayes and coauthor Walter apply strategic management thinking in the public library. The role of libraries in the information economies is the focus here, stressing strategic management rather than strategic planning. Strategic management is defined as the emphasis of an organization on relationships with external environments and an orientation toward long-range institutional goals. The ideas here deal with community problems and needs, users and their needs, the external environmental pressures on a library, and techniques for assessing strategic position, future position, library operational costs and services, and community information economies. While the ideas presented are a welcome addition to public librarianship, the densely academic approach of this dissertation-like work, however, places this tome entirely outside the reach of most public librarians. It is much more suitable for a library science management class. Wait for an entrepreneurial version complete with onsite training and consultation that will pragmatically apply these ideas in a more user-friendly format.-Dale Farris, Groves, Tex.

Library Journal

A professional reference addressing the needs of public libraries and providing guidance on how to manage change successfully in the community library environment. Provides a conceptual framework for strategic management and details the assessment of the library's strategic position, with chapters on top management responsibility, costing library services, and the structure of community information economies. For public library managers and members of governing boards at all levels, as well as students in library and information science. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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