Where is the Xerox Corporation of the LIS sector? - library information service area of Europe slow in implementing quality management program - Perspectives on Quality in Libraries

Library Trends, Wntr, 1996 by Alan Gilchrist, John Brockman

Abstract

Though there is much interest in quality issues in the library and information science (LIS) sector in Europe, implementations appear to be few and piecemeal. Barriers to fuller involvement persist and a critical mass of lead organizations has not yet appeared. It is argued that the prerequisites for greater progress are: (1) a visible LIS quality management infrastructure; (2) greater awareness of the issues, improved training and availability of tried and tested tools at the organizational level, and (3) a more informed dialogue at the interfaces of the information chain, supported by a consensus-based language of performance criteria.

Introduction

The Xerox Corporation is the only organization to have won all three international quality awards: the Deming prize, the Baldrige Quality Award and, the newest of the three, the European Quality Award. These award systems embody all the basic tenets of Total Quality Management (TQM) and share the particular and specific objective of establishing world leaders - i.e., paragons of the application of TQM - that other organizations are invited to emulate. It is significant, and a clear indicator of the success of these schemes, that so few organizations have won the prizes; many more organizations and parts of organizations have adopted the underlying quality models and used them to assess their own performances.

In those organizations that have successfully embraced the quality culture - e.g., Xerox Corporation, British Telecom, and others - the word "quality" appears to have become redundant and, for example, the European Quality Model is now often referred to as the "Business Excellence Model" by organizations in both the private and public sectors. At a recent meeting in Luxembourg, a speaker from the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM - administrators of the European Quality Award) announced that he was not going to talk about the "management of quality" but the "quality of management." This is a perfect riposte to those carping critics who suggest that TQM is the latest hype, a passing fad. On the contrary, TQM is a logical extension of the evolution of management theory and practice from the mechanistic approaches of people like F. W. Taylor to those propounded by Peter Checkland, a principle proponent of SSM (Soft System Methodology). Like TQM, SSM recognizes the existence of various stakeholders interacting in dynamic and behavioral systems.

It might be viewed as a paradox that, while library and information science personnel have much of the expertise inherent to quality management, a critical mass in the sector does not yet seem to have appeared. LIS personnel should be well equipped to deal with the documentation of ISO 9000 (especially with some of the DMS-based software packages now available); but, more fundamentally, they have always operated (haven't they?) customer-focused services and been adept at interpersonal networking.

Quality Management Take-Up in the Library

and Information Science Sector

On the basis of very few surveys and the personal experience of the two authors, the implementation of quality management appears to be limited and piecemeal, at least within the continent of Europe. A survey conducted by Porter (1993), mainly of the public and academic library sector in the United Kingdom, showed that any involvement in quality management was in its very early stages, encompassed a wide range of approaches, and had been developed in isolation from other LIS. From the survey, it transpired that only 19 percent claimed to be involved in TQM and a mere 14 percent in certification.

Three years later, a second United Kingdom report (Webb, 1995), concentrating on the special library sector, suggested that just over one-quarter of the organizations surveyed were involved with TQM and about one-third with BS 5750 (the United Kingdom certification equivalent of ISO 9000).

However, as the report acknowledges, these figures are misleading:

although TQM was in place as an organization-wide policy, because the LIS unit was either part of another department or did not have overall responsibility in its decision-making, its TQM related activities could not be set out as something operating separately at the LIS level. In the case of BS 5750 it is possible for individual departments to apply for recognition and in a number of cases, especially where the LIS was part of another department, the organisation had made the decision about which departments or functions should pursue BS 5750. These had not always included the LIS or its parent function. (p. 12)

This picture is borne out by a show of hands at the 1995 Spring Meeting of EUSIDIC (the European Association of Information Services). To the question, Has anybody been through the ISO 9000 process?" only five people, out of an audience of forty who had come to discuss quality issues, answered in the affirmative, and in all five cases the process had been initiated from upper administrators. The EUSIDIC audience was a mixture of database producers and library and information science personnel, but the same question (from the audience) was put to a panel of six database producers at the 1993 International Online Meeting in London. On that occasion, not one had embarked on certification, though one claimed to be considering the Baldrige Quality Model. In France, Duflos (In press) found a similarly low level of activity among French database producers with only 7 percent using self-assessment and none having prepared a quality manual.