The Essential Peter Drucker - management guru to speak at Special Libraries Assoc conference - Brief Article

Information Outlook, Oct, 2001 by Bruce Rosenstein

Two critical events affected the world of libraries and information in 1909: the beginning of the SLA and the birth of Peter Drucker.

We all know how the SLA has affected our professional lives, but what about Drucker? He is probably best known as a management guru, but not as someone you would think of in the same sentence with the word library.

Drucker's writings and influence on the concepts of information, knowledge, and management are of the greatest importance and relevance to our daily lives. These qualities and his knack for being ahead of his time-or possibly setting the agenda-are likely some of the reasons he was chosen to be the keynote speaker at the 2002 Special Libraries Association annual conference in Los Angeles.

This column aims at getting Information Outlook readers up to speed on Drucker in the eight issues before the annual conference. It will be based on a theme from The Essential Drucker, which gets to the core of his message quicker than any of his past works. The book collects some of his most influential writings into one 358-page volume.

The topics to be covered each month will be Drucker's ideas on: knowledge and information, management, leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation, teaching and learning, self-development, and nonprofits and the social sector.

The Essential Drucker is divided into three sections: management, the individual, and society. The material comes from 10 of his books. (He has published more than 30 since his first one appeared more than 60 years ago.) Some of those writings first appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review.

Drucker, who turns 92 in November, is as active as any of us. He continues complementary careers as a consultant, author, and professor. He has taught for more than 50 years, including the past 30 at the school now named for him, The Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at the Claremont Graduate University in California. He is also on the front lines of e-learning, producing The Peter F. Drucker Executive Management Series of online courses, for a Phoenix-based company, Corpedia.

He also founded and is the honorary chairman of The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.

Many readers will have already read some of Drucker's works. Whether or not you have, The Essential Drucker is an excellent place to review his work. You can also find lots of relevant information about him on his foundation's web site, www.drucker.org and at the site promoting The Essential Drucker, www.peter-drucker.com.

Drucker was born into a cultured, intellectual family in Vienna on November 19, 1909. As a young boy, he met Sigmund Freud. After receiving a law degree in Germany, his early career consisted of working in finance and then journalism. He came to the United States in 1937, where he stayed in journalism and began writing books. Drucker eventually became a management consultant, and a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington, New York University, and Claremont.

Bruce Rosenstein is a librarian at USA TODAY and an adjunct professor at The Catholic University School of Library and In formation Science. He can be reached at brosenstein@ usatoday.com.

SeLected Biblioaraphy:

About Peter Drucker:

Beatty, Jack. The World According to Peter Drucker, (Broadway Books, paperback edition, 1999), Drucker, Peter F. Adventures of a Bystander (John Wiley & Sons, 1998 a reissue of his 1978 memoirs with a new self-introduction)

Flaherty, John E. Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind (Jossey-Bass, 1999)

Heller, Robert. Peter Drucker (DK business masterminds, DK Books, 2000)

By Peter Drucker:

The Effective Executive (HarperBusiness, 1967), The Essential Drucker (HarperCollins, 2001), Management Challenges for the 21st Century (HarperCollins, 1999), Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (HarperBusiness, 1974), Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (Harvard Business School Press, 1998), The Practice of Management (HarperBusiness, 1954)