INTRODUCTION

Chasing articles for this series over the past 17 years has led me to look at awide variety of studies and to come to understand much about whatlibrarians and LIS scholars think about when they consider management andleadership. Most of that work has come from people who work in or writeprimarily about academic libraries, given that it is that group who are mostlikely to seek doctorates and publish as they pursue tenure and promotion.While much that has been written can apply to work in other kinds oflibraries and other nonprofit organization, it is always rewarding to findgood work that relates to public and school libraries. This year, we havedone that, and four of the six chapters here relate directly to theseorganizations. A fifth talks about interpersonal dynamics in catalogingorganizations, another often neglected area in library management literature.

The first chapter is about public libraries and comes from Peter A. Gisolfi,an architect with experience designing public library buildings. Gisolfifocuses on two traditional and two innovative library buildings and reflectshis views on best practice in designing library buildings that canaccommodate the changes that have taken place recently in public libraries.He talks about the impact of technology and building designs that reflect anew understanding of the role of libraries. For libraries to evolve from aplace that houses and circulates books and provides reference services to acommunity center, new kinds of building will have to be developed. Therehas been much conversation recently about the role of the library as place inour library, and Gisolfi offers an interesting contribution to thatconversation from the perspective of one who designs our buildings.Librarians might differ on where he places his emphases, but all will find thisoutsider’s perspective worth noting.

Miriam Matteson then offers an analysis of communications patternswithin a committee in a public library that was charged with handling anissue of importance to the library and its staff. Academic librarians talk a lotabout committees and collegial decision making. However, Matteson looksat this through the lens of communication theory in a setting where it isdiscussed less often. She uses this perspective to look past advocacy andprovide a real analysis of how committees can be used in public libraries to

ix

build community and arrive at decisions. We have in my 30 years as alibrarian argued that this is the ideal way for libraries to make decisions, butwe have produced precious little research about how committees do theirwork, and even less in public library settings.

Dianne L. Velasquez then talks about how the introduction of publicaccess computers connected to the Internet changed small public libraryorganizations. Her study offers examples of how a new technology impactson the culture and values of an organization, and she provides detail abouthow people working in small organizations have come to grips with thechallenges these devices have presented. Given that many of those whoworked in these libraries came to them because they appreciated the paceand values of traditional libraries, Velasquez was able to provide an insightinto changes in that culture have been perceived by staff and clients alikeand how library organizations and those who lead them have accommo-dated that change. At the same time, she explored new specialties introducedin libraries, and the changing roles librarians and library staff have assumedas libraries transitioned to meet 21st century needs.

MaryBeth Meszaros’ chapter is a different kind of piece. Meszaros is atheatre researcher educated in English who brought to librarianship a keenunderstanding of how her colleagues in the theatre brought a uniqueapproach to research. Theatre scholars, in Meszaros view, combine a needfor understanding text and performance with a pragmatic need to find toidentify ways to improve the work of actors on the stage. At the same time,those who are practicing actors are limited in the amount of time they cancommit to research because of their constant need to compete for their nextrole in a very difficult work environment. The result is a different kind ofresearch practice that is very different from the approach of other scholarsin the humanities to the literature (and to information in general). Meszarosconcludes that these differences make the case that librarians need todisaggregate the work of researchers in the humanities (and other fields aswell) and focus on the differences in information seeking behavior amongfields and even within individual ones.

Susan Warner follows with a study of the impact of flexible scheduling oninformation literacy programs in elementary media centers. Warner notesthat both the American Association for School Libraries (AASL) and theAssociation for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT)advocate for flexible scheduling based on a constructivist view of education.Her quantitative study was designed to determine whether this kind offlexibility did in fact encourage use of the media center and collaborationbetween media specialists and classroom teachers and eventually academic

INTRODUCTIONx

achievement more effectively than the traditional practice of schedulingclasses for library visits at fixed times. Her results might surprise some.

Finally, we have Gretchen L. Hoffman’s chapter about how catalogingunits within academic libraries are adjusting to changes in the libraryenvironment. Hoffman talks about the disruption of a culture within thelibrary that for many represented the core specialty of librarianship, theorganization of knowledge. As budgets for new materials shrink, electronicresources become more important, cataloging work is outsourced,customization decreases, and workloads decline, catalogers are seeing therespect they enjoy in the library community diminish. Jobs within cataloginghave become less difficult, and the importance of cataloging as a corediscipline has become less important. Hoffman focuses on ways catalogersand their organizations have moved to adjust their culture to relate moreclosely to the values espoused by library leaders and lay claim to new workdomains that are considered more important in today’s libraries. Changingcultures, repurposing work, and general goal displacement are huge issuesfor our profession as it transitions to a new model, and Hoffman deserves aplace in the middle of discussions as to how that might be accomplished.

Once again, it is fair to say that Advances in Library Administration andOrganization has identified important pieces of work about importantchallenges facing our profession. Janine Golden and I are pleased to offerthem to you, and we hope you will be equally pleased to accept theseadditions to our literature.

Delmus E. WilliamsEditor

Introduction xi