Duane Webster is a visionary leader who, throughout his career, has had a significant impact on the improvement of libraries and librarianship. His work to establish the Association of Research Library's (ARL) Office of Management Studies (OMS) and its several organizational improvement programs laid the foundation for organization development in…

Since 2008, Victoria University (VU) Library has employed 20 or more Student Assistants annually who work on a casual basis for up to 12 hours per week during terms/semesters to staff the Library in Study Hall mode (where there is self-service access to PCs and collections and limited staff assistance). This initiative appears to have been highly…

Based on data from a 1979 survey of ARL member libraries, this study by the Office of Management Studies analyzes the responses of selected libraries which had provided internal studies or planning documents on the subject of internal communication and notes the extent of resulting changes in procedures. The studies yielded information on staff…

Since its founding in 1978, the Bibliographic Instruction Section (BIS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has published an annual guide that serves as the organizational handbook and directory of BIS officers and committee members. This directory opens with a capsule history of the origins and early years of BIS written…

Using the Delphi technique, this paper continues to develop a set of attributes that Association of Research Libraries directors of today and the near future will need to possess. The questions remaining are: How does the list of attributes change in other organizational settings? and Where can each attribute best be acquired? (Author/AEF)

Describes the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), whose member universities share book collections, an online library system containing multiple electronic resources including a union catalog, an offsite book storage facility, and a separately staffed service organization. WRLC's organizational development, structure, governance,…

Stresses the need for research libraries to develop conscious, explicit processes for organizational change through an understanding of organizational development. Internal restructuring, parallel organization for problem solving and guiding change, organizational culture and organizational politics, strategic organizational change, training, and…