Library Management III: Library Buildings, Furniture and Equipment, Green Buildings, Information Commons, Makerspaces, Security and Safety; MIS, MBO, Change, Disaster and Crisis Management; Knowledge Management; and Marketing of Library Products and Services
2. MIS, MBO, change management, disaster management and crisis management
A management information system (MIS) collects, processes and presents information that managers need for planning, control and decision-making. In a library, the integrated library system supplies much of it: acquisitions and expenditure against budget, processing backlogs, circulation by subject and user group, e-resource usage, inter-library loan turnaround and gate counts, presented as periodic and exception reports and dashboards. Management by objectives (MBO), described by Peter Drucker in The Practice of Management (1954), sets organisational goals, agrees specific and measurable objectives with each manager and staff member, plans actions, reviews progress periodically and appraises performance against the objectives.
| Topic | Core ideas |
|---|---|
| Change management | Kurt Lewin's three stages: unfreeze (create readiness), change (move to the new state) and refreeze (stabilise it); John Kotter's eight steps, from creating urgency to anchoring change in the culture; overcoming resistance through communication, participation, training and support; for example, the move from card catalogue to an integrated system or to RFID |
| Disaster management | A cycle of prevention and mitigation, preparedness (a written disaster plan with risk assessment, salvage priorities, contact lists and supplies), response and recovery; wet paper should be frozen within about 48 hours to stop mould before vacuum freeze-drying; in India the Disaster Management Act 2005 created the National Disaster Management Authority |
| Crisis management | Handling sudden events that threaten operations or reputation: a cyber-attack or data breach, a censorship controversy, a pandemic closure; business continuity planning, a crisis team and clear communication; the COVID-19 closures of 2020 pushed libraries to remote services and e-resources |
3. Knowledge management: principles, tools, components and architecture
Knowledge management (KM) is the systematic process of creating, capturing, organising, sharing and applying an organisation's knowledge, both explicit (documents, databases, procedures) and tacit (skills and experience in people's heads), to improve performance. Its principles are that knowledge is an asset to be managed; that it resides mostly in people; that sharing must be encouraged by culture and incentives; that technology enables but does not replace human exchange; and that KM must serve organisational goals. Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi's SECI model (The Knowledge-Creating Company, 1995) describes four conversions: socialisation (tacit to tacit, through shared experience), externalisation (tacit to explicit, through articulation), combination (explicit to explicit, through combining documents) and internalisation (explicit to tacit, through learning by doing).
| Aspect | Content |
|---|---|
| Components | People (knowledge workers, champions, communities), processes (capture, organisation, sharing, reuse), technology (repositories, search, collaboration tools) and content |
| Tools | Document and content management systems, intranets and portals, expert directories (who knows what), communities of practice, wikis and discussion forums, lessons-learned databases, knowledge maps, mentoring and storytelling |
| Architecture | Layered models such as Amrit Tiwana's (2000) seven layers: interface, access and authentication, collaborative intelligence and filtering, application, transport, middleware and legacy integration, and repositories |
| Role of librarians | Organising and indexing knowledge assets, building taxonomies and repositories, running expert directories, information audits and knowledge-sharing programmes |
4. Marketing of library products and services; management consultancy
Philip Kotler and Sidney Levy's article "Broadening the concept of marketing" (1969) argued that marketing applies to non-profit organisations as well as firms, and libraries took this up. Marketing a library means understanding users' needs and designing, pricing, delivering and communicating services to meet them, not merely publicity. A marketing plan runs through a situation analysis (often SWOT), marketing research (user surveys, focus groups, usage data), objectives, strategies, an action plan with budget, and evaluation. Segmentation divides users into groups with similar needs, by demographic (age, level of study), geographic, psychographic (lifestyle, attitudes) or behavioural (frequency of use, benefits sought) criteria, so that services can be targeted and positioned.
| Marketing mix element | In a library |
|---|---|
| Product | Collections, services and information products: loans, reference, databases, bibliographies, training |
| Price | Money charged, if any, and the user's cost in time and effort; free, subsidised, cost-recovery or market pricing for value-added services such as document delivery or database searching |
| Place | Where and how services reach users: branches, hours, website, mobile apps, remote access |
| Promotion | Advertising, publicity, public relations, social media, displays, orientation sessions |
| People, process, physical evidence | The three service elements added by Booms and Bitner (1981): staff attitudes and skills, the ease of procedures, and the look and feel of the building and website |
Management consultancy has two sides for libraries. Libraries hire consultants for building planning, automation, digitisation or restructuring, gaining outside expertise and objectivity. Librarians themselves act as consultants and information consultants, conducting information audits (identifying what information an organisation has, needs and uses, and where the gaps are), advising on library planning and knowledge management, and selling information services, which is itself a marketable product. IFLA's International Marketing Award recognises library marketing campaigns.
Key takeaways
- Buildings are planned from the librarian's building programme with modular construction; Faulkner-Brown's ten commandments (flexible, compact, accessible, extendible, varied, organised, comfortable, constant, secure, economic); green buildings are rated by LEED, IGBC and GRIHA.
- Information commons integrate technology, help and study space; makerspaces offer tools for creation; security uses EM, RF or RFID gates, CCTV and fire protection.
- MIS supplies decision information from library systems; MBO (Drucker, 1954) agrees measurable objectives; change follows Lewin's unfreeze-change-refreeze and Kotter's eight steps; disaster management runs prevention, preparedness, response and recovery; crisis management handles sudden threats to operations and reputation.
- KM manages explicit and tacit knowledge through people, process, technology and content; Nonaka and Takeuchi's SECI model (1995): socialisation, externalisation, combination, internalisation; architectures such as Tiwana's seven layers.
- Library marketing (Kotler and Levy, 1969) uses a plan, research, segmentation and the marketing mix, four Ps (McCarthy, 1960) extended to seven for services; librarians both hire and act as management and information consultants.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
Management by objectives was described by:
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Answer: A — Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker described MBO in The Practice of Management (1954). Lewin gave the three-stage change model, Kotler is the leading marketing scholar, and Nonaka co-authored the SECI model of knowledge creation.In the SECI model, converting an experienced librarian's tacit know-how into a written procedure manual is:
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Answer: B — Externalisation
Externalisation converts tacit knowledge into explicit form. Socialisation passes tacit knowledge to others through shared experience, combination merges explicit sources, and internalisation turns explicit knowledge into personal tacit skill.How many elements are in the extended marketing mix used for services, adding people, process and physical evidence to the four Ps? Type the number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 7
McCarthy's four Ps (product, price, place, promotion) plus Booms and Bitner's three service elements (people, process, physical evidence) make seven.Which of the following are among Faulkner-Brown's "ten commandments" for library buildings? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Extendible; B — Flexible; C — Constant in environment
The ten are flexible, compact, accessible, extendible, varied, organised, comfortable, constant in environment, secure and economic. Monumentality is not one of them; it often works against flexibility and economy.Kurt Lewin's model of change consists of:
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Answer: D — Unfreeze, change, refreeze
Lewin's three stages are unfreeze, change (move) and refreeze. Plan-do-check-act is Deming's cycle, define-measure-analyse-improve-control is Six Sigma's DMAIC, and the last option is the SECI model.Assertion (A): Water-damaged books should be frozen promptly after a flood. Reason (R): Freezing makes water-damaged paper permanently unusable. Choose the correct option.
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Answer: C — A is true, but R is false
A is true and R is false. Freezing, ideally within about 48 hours, stops mould growth and buys time; the frozen books can later be dried by vacuum freeze-drying, which removes the ice without further damage.Which of the following are green building rating systems relevant to library buildings in India? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — LEED; B — GRIHA; D — IGBC
GRIHA (India's national rating system), IGBC (the Indian Green Building Council) and LEED (the US Green Building Council) rate green buildings. LibQUAL+ is a survey of library service quality, not a building rating.A library groups its users as undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers and faculty in order to design different services for each. This is:
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Answer: C — Market segmentation
Dividing users into groups with similar needs in order to target services is segmentation, here on a demographic basis (level of study). Benchmarking compares with peers, an information audit maps information needs and holdings, and zero-base budgeting is a budgeting method.A library surveys 900 users: 360 undergraduates, 270 postgraduates, 180 researchers and 90 faculty. What percentage of the surveyed users are researchers? Type the number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 20
Researchers = 180 / 900 × 100 = 20 per cent. Knowing each segment's share, alongside its needs and use, helps a library decide where to direct marketing effort.An integrated space combining computers, reference help, IT support and group study areas is called:
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Answer: A — An information commons
An information commons integrates technology, help and study space. A makerspace provides tools for creating things, a closed stack is a storage area not open to users, and a carrel is a single study desk.