Introduction

Library Trends, Summer, 2004 by Keith Russell, Denise Stephens

ONE OF THE GROWING TRENDS IN LIBRARIES, especially academic research libraries, is an increase in the number of institutions that are using organizational development (OD) philosophy, processes, and tools on a regular basis. Consequently, we have developed this issue of Library Trends to provide an overview of organizational development as it is practiced in libraries, and to explore leadership development within the OD context. This issue covers a wide range of topics and draws on the literature of many disciplines. It is meant to serve as a resource for every person who believes that libraries can be improved in many ways, including how they acquire, organize, manage, and provide access to information; assess the needs of customers and provide appropriate services; manage human and financial resources; plan for the future; fulfill their mission; develop leadership skills in the staff; and initiate and manage change.

Organizational development is

   a long-term effort, led and supported by top management, to improve
   an organization's visioning, empowerment, learning, and
   problem-solving processes, through an ongoing, collaborative
   management of organization culture--with special emphasis on the
   culture of intact work teams and other team configurations--using
   the consultant-facilitator role and the theory and technology of
   applied behavioral science, including action research.
   (French & Bell, 1999, pp. 25-26)

Much of the theory and practice of organizational development evolved during the last half of the twentieth century, primarily in business and higher education. Libraries of all types have adopted various organizational development practices, both in a proactive way to create healthy organizations and as a means of correcting organizational dysfunction.

Another useful definition of OD reinforces the theme of empowered people who, through learning, are the designers and implementers of systematic change:

   Organization development is an educational process by which human
   resources are continuously identified, allocated, and expanded in
   ways that make these resources more available to the organization,
   and therefore, improve the organization's problem-solving
   capabilities.... The most general objective of organizational
   development--OD--is to develop self-renewing, self-correcting
   systems of people who learn to organize themselves in a variety of
   ways according to the nature of their tasks, and who continue to
   expand the choices available to the organization as it copes with
   the changing demands of a changing environment. OD stands for a
   new way of looking at the human side of organizational life.
   (Pfeiffer & Jones, 1971, p. 153)

Carnevale, author of a book that focuses on the use of OD in the administration and management of public institutions, adds this insight:

   OD is seen as an effort to deal with or initiate change in
   organizational cultures ... [involving] collaboration between a
   change agent and members of an organizational system ... to
   expedite the diagnosis of organization problems and to encourage
   strategies that equip organizational members to learn how to cope
   with their own difficulties. OD is underscored by a belief that
   organizational members own their own problems and are responsible
   for finding solutions to them. (Carnevale, 2003, p. 1)

The articles in this issue showcase the many ways consciously chosen OD strategies can invigorate libraries. Our authors describe various OD concepts and explain how they are employed in various organizations. Where appropriate, research results supporting the use of such tools and techniques are reviewed. To a large extent, these articles provide specifics on how OD has been applied in libraries and what the results have been so far. We also have encouraged our authors to explore the potential of future applications.

Karen Holloway leads off the issue by highlighting the many reasons an increasing number of academic research libraries have created positions that focus on OD. She summarizes how libraries have employed the concepts of OD and the perceived results of focusing on the philosophy, tools, and techniques of that discipline.

Kathryn J. Deiss discusses the challenges libraries face in focusing on the needs of users and how strategy and innovation, as well as natural organizational tensions, can be employed as tools to help libraries creatively evolve and effectively engage their clientele.

Michelle L. Kaarst-Brown, Scott Nicholson, Gisela M. von Dran, and Jeffrey Stanton explore aspects of library culture and current strategies libraries can use to capitalize on the culture and move ahead. Their article summarizes relevant literature from other disciplines and provides thought-provoking insights not normally discussed in the library literature.

Three articles in this issue apply the disciplines identified by Peter Senge as necessary for an organization to evolve into a learning organization (Senge, 1990). The case studies in these articles describe and analyze the efforts of individual libraries to plan and implement deep, long-term change: Joan Giesecke and Beth McNeil discuss the overall concept of the learning organization, which is fully consistent with what academic research libraries (and often their parent organizations--that is, universities) are all about--education and continuous learning. Their article describes the appeal of the concept and how some libraries are implementing the principles of the learning organization. Shelley Phipps focuses on how one library is creating a learning organization and, more specifically, how various organizational systems have been designed to facilitate movement toward that ideal. Betsy A. Bernfeld provides a personal narrative of how she and the public library system she directs have embraced aspects of Senge's work, particularly the emphasis on teams.