Directors of large libraries: roles, functions, and activities - The Library Director

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES THE CURRENT experience and trends in the roles, functions, and activities of today's directors of large libraries or library systems. Directors assume an extensive range of complex responsibilities in their unique positions, foremost of which is accountability for internal organization, operations, and management. A shift in roles, functions, and activities is occurring, however, from predominantly internal affairs to an increasing emphasis on external concerns. These include technological, economic, and political issues.

INTRODUCTION

Directing a large American library today is not what this author expected it would be thirty years ago. New information technologies and scholarly communication systems, the Internet, access issues, and intellectual property rights have made the library landscape more complex. rising prices for scholarly journals, coupled with the sheer volume of published information, have caused major economic problems. Budget cutbacks and rising costs for human resources and facilities exacerbate the problems. Leadership expectations, external politics, demands for accountability and the compelling need for strong public relations, all belie the three decades-old foresight.

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

In 1963, the author had just entered library school at Pratt Institute with an internship in the Brooklyn Public Library. Libraries then were still largely worlds of books and other printed material. Technology was just beginning to make an appearance. There were photocopy machines--the kind that used rolls of slick paper and cost 25 cents per copy--and photo-based circulation systems but not much else. Bush's (1945) visionary "memex" was still an intriguing, creative idea for dealing with the information explosion. Automated techniques were receiving increasing attention, but practical applications were yet to come; the machine-readable records pilot project (MARC) at the Library of Congress would not begin until 1966 (Avram, 1975). Holley (1972) had not written about the changes he detected in the "organization and administration of urban university libraries" (p. 175); McAnally and Downs (1973) had not produced their classic essay on the pressures affecting the roles of directors of university libraries. Libraries were then only on the threshold of a series of transitional periods which continue today, each with a shorter life-span than the last. But nearly fifteen years would pass before many writers would begin to seriously examine the changing and unique roles of directors in large libraries caused by changes in organization, management, technology, costs, and external politics.

Lee (1977) was one of the first to examine the pressures on academic library directors and the effect the pressures had on their administrative roles. A few years later, Metz (1979) looked at descriptive data to understand the actual roles of library directors, particularly external relationships. He concluded that internal library matters demanded more time and energy than external affairs.

Baughman (1980) inquired into the roles of metropolitan library directors, noting that more and more of their time was being required outside the demands of day-to-day operations and management. Moskowitz (1986) and Mech (1989, 1990) used Mintzberg's managerial role model in three different studies of the external and internal managerial roles of library directors. In keeping with Metz's conclusion, but somewhat contrary to Baughman's observations, Moskowitz and Mech concluded that library directors in both public and academic libraries were emphasizing their internal managerial roles over external environmental matters.

The work of Euster (1987), most notably her investigation of the role of academic library leaders, provides an important new role model. The model defines the roles of academic library directors in terms of influencing both the library's internal organization and its external environment.

The author's personal experience has followed a career path from a full-time entry-level professional position in 1965, through a department headship, to the directorship of a large undergraduate library, and then to senior line and staff positions. Library directorships at a private Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member and the University of Wyoming (UW), a land-grant institution, have placed the author in the mainstream of library transition and change. For example, the University of Wyoming has moved from the affluence of the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s into an era of resource constraints and greater public scrutiny and accountability. The University of Wyoming Libraries have become highly visible and attract significant public attention in both the state and the region. Increasingly difficult questions are being asked about library cost effectiveness, organizational efficiency, collections and access, the quality of services provided, the adequacy of facilities, the availability of new information technologies, the role of cooperation and resource sharing, and library leadership.