MULTI‐SITE MANAGEMENT; THE COMPUTER CONTRIBUTION IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

A survey of the literature of automation indicates not surprisingly that the use of the computer as a management tool apart from as a provider of statistics has attracted little attention. Chorba and Bommer for example see automation as a question of decision support systems, and Runyon typically regards library management as depending crucially upon a total systems approach. One of the most comprehensive accounts of computerisation in an academic library in the UK similarly reveals an inevitable concentration on the systems. The use of the computer as a part of a management philosophy per se is one which is hardly touched upon, yet in a multi site organisation in particular it can be of vital significance in itself. In the context of the particular problems of this kind of library service it is a general aid to management in a much broader sense.