Advances in Library Administration and Organization (Volume 31)

In the introduction to the latest annual edition of Advances in Library Administration and Organization, Editor Delmus E. Williams suggests that:

This is not only a practical statement of the book's aims but provides as well a convenient yardstick against which to measure the success of its chapters, each of which is directed at issues of concern to the library profession. Chapters consider library and technology partnerships within academic libraries, the adoption of virtual media and Second Life avatars by librarians, the influence of pre-disaster library leadership in post-disaster situations, the role of competition in library administration, and academic library development officers.

The opening chapter by Cameron Tuai applies the contingency theory model to the partnership between librarians and technologists in the academic library information commons. He identifies a spectrum of cooperative behaviours, ranging from simple standardization of joint practice through to the flexibility and interactivity of reciprocal interdependence, and emphasises the role of contingency theory in ensuring the best fit between partners. Certainly interactions between librarians and technology experts are of great interest within the tertiary education sector, but what is less clear is the practical value of this for library managers. For example, the reader would have benefited from a clear definition of contingency theory against which to measure the detailed discussion, but instead is left to construct it from the literature review and is not presented with a clear statement of what Tuai means by it until page 27. The chapter appears to be based on doctoral work, as is evidenced by the sudden and unexplained appearance of references to “the dissertation” from page 58, and the author's pleas for managerial research to be taken more seriously by library practitioners are not helped by the impression, reinforced by the appearance of the same sentence on pages 63 and 64, that this particular piece of research could have been more carefully processed into a form accessible to practitioners.

Valerie Hill's account of the use by librarians of virtual media and virtual worlds (specifically Second Life) uses diffusion theory as its explanatory model. Different rates of adoption derive from five factors – relative advantage (i.e. benefits), compatibility (consistency with existing values and practices), complexity (difficulty of use), trialability (ease of trialling before use) and observability (visibility to others). Hill concludes that Second Life librarianship has been a useful innovation with a good degree of fit with professional values and high visibility, but that its relative difficulty for non-gamers is a barrier to both its uptake by librarians and widespread engagement by library users. As befits the quantitative approach she has taken, Hill's account is both detailed and methodologically rigorous but for this reader much of the benefit lay in the anecdotal accounts which brought a refreshing real life perspective to the discussion.

In contrast to these two quantitative studies, Susan Parker's account of the influence of leadership on innovation and change in libraries that have experienced disasters is strictly qualitative, based on interviews with seven staff at one library. What such an approach can bring, however, is a richness of insight and discussion often lacking in more formally rigorous work. Parker identifies a pre-disaster management style that fostered and rewarded trust and experimentation as having been critical to the successful restoration of services and the creation of new ones. A post-disaster environment requires high levels of change and creativity and is also, by definition, unpredictable. While Parker emphasises the importance of disaster planning, she rightly makes the point that leadership style is the single most important factor in institutional survival, and that affective and interpersonal factors are as important as practical ones. This is an important read for all library managers.

The book concludes with two more specialised studies. Larry Nash White looks at the competitive behaviours of library managers and concludes that there is a disparity between their reported stance and their real-life practice. The discussion is set within the context of competition for resources in an ever-changing world, and the strategic challenges faced by these managers. Finally, Michael Lorenzen investigates the role of library development officers in fund-raising for academic libraries, based on the understandings of the officers themselves. He provides an overview of the range of skills the role requires, the approaches that have worked (and not worked), and the necessary engagement with other university staff to ensure the success of fund-raising.