Evidence-based practice and organizational development in libraries

Library Trends, Spring, 2008 by Keith Russell

ABSTRACT

This article is written for a Festschrift for F. W. Lancaster, and it summarizes the author's library school experiences as a student of Professor Lancaster and Professor Herbert Goldhor at the University of Illinois. Both professors instilled in students a strong inclination to use real and appropriate information in evaluating situations, making decisions, delivering information services, and managing libraries. The author suggests that this Lancaster-Goldhor approach to information, and to data-driven decision making, anticipated the current movement toward evidence-based practice (EBP) in libraries. He suggests that libraries embrace the premises, philosophy, values, and practices of organizational development (OD) as an overarching discipline that facilitates EBP in the library culture, and ultimately leads to healthier and more effective organizations. This article complements a 2004 Library Trends article on OD, and numerous recent publications on OD and related topics are cited.

INTRODUCTION

The title of the Festschrift in which this article appears is "The Evaluation and Transformation of Information Systems: Essays in Honor of the Legacy of F. W. Lancaster" (Haricombe and Russell, 2008). That title reflects the influence his work has had on how information systems are evaluated and improved over time. The word "transformation" refers to the tremendous change in the last forty years in the capability of those systems to help society expand and maintain its control over an ever-growing body of intellectual content and bibliographic information. Lancaster is one of the researchers and educators who helped shape information systems during the dramatic change of that transformation.

Some of Lancaster's students actually went on to work on the research, technical, and practical aspects of designing, testing, and improving information systems. Some became library school faculty, following in his footsteps, doing research on information systems, publishing, and educating the next generation of librarians. Most of his students became practicing librarians, serving in all types of libraries. By training those students about information systems, vocabulary control, measurement, and evaluation of library services, and other topics, Lancaster had a significant impact on the ability of those librarians to understand and master information systems (even as they changed); to ensure that their libraries provided access to the best information systems for their users; and to facilitate, through instruction and consultation, the understanding and effective use of those systems by the user. The ultimate outcome is that the user finds and gains access to the information needed.

Lancaster is known for his creative analysis and synthesis of earlier publications; design of innovative research to augment that existing information; and his application, publication, and teaching of the new ideas and methodologies that resulted. Many of the articles in the Festschrift explore aspects of information systems affected by Lancaster's work. Other articles discuss topics such as bibliometrics, using Lancaster's voluminous publication record as a dataset to be analyzed using techniques he taught his students. In this article I comment on how he served as a role model for his students, teaching by example the importance of reviewing the literature on important topics in order to understand, develop research areas, make good decisions, improve upon the past, and advance human knowledge. For his students who went into library work, the application of his approach would enable them, on the basis of evidence, to improve the programs and services offered to customers.

When evidence-based practice (EBP) in libraries emerged, Lancaster's students already knew what that was all about. As librarians they would be able to create healthy libraries that are effective in serving users. They would pay attention not only to the what of libraries (the services and programs), but also the how (the processes by which they designed and delivered programs and services, did planning, and made decisions). In a parallel sense, Lancaster worked with the applications and system features (the how) in information systems that would enable librarians and others to gain control over the intellectual content and bibliographic records (the what) that document humanity's history and progress.

LIBRARY SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, EARLY 1970S

Professor Lancaster was one of the first professors I met in 1970 when I started the master's degree program in library science at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS). The department participated in a national effort to recruit and train librarians to work in biomedical libraries, and Lancaster coordinated that program for GSLIS. I was finishing up my master's thesis on plant ecology in the botany department when I started library school. As a part-time student in GSLIS I was not eligible to be part of the biomedical librarian program, but I did meet Professor Lancaster early in my studies. I would later take Lancaster's information storage and retrieval course and his vocabulary control course. He made those subjects interesting and understandable, and his demeanor and sense of humor meant that we the students were entertained (as well as educated).