We can see that Higher Education (HE) Library and Information Services (LIS), are part of an environment which is subject to both incremental and discontinuous change:
Political - increased control from central government
Sociological - the information age
Educational - the mass HE system
Technological - networking, computing and telecommunications
Organisational - new structures
Economic - increased demand for value for money
Cultural - changed norms and values
In LIS the move from holdings of information sources in-house to electronic access to remote sources, along with the pressure to provide more services with fewer human and financial resources brings its own kind of change:
New structures such as team-working
Collaboration with a range of different groups and individuals
Additional skills for staff and users
Increased management and decision-making
Heavier workloads
LIS managers and their staff need to adopt positive strategies to cope with these changes:
'Library administrators must become facilitators... displayed 300 characters
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They must understand how the world is changing and how the library must change. And they must also learn to be masters at persuasion, since wherever there is change there will be resistance.' (Moore, 1995)
Coping with change rests on two struts: understanding change and managing change.
Coping with change: understanding
Practical steps can be taken to increase knowledge and understanding:
SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis
TQM (Total Quality Management) exercises
Group planning exercises
Programmes of visiting speakers
Training needs analysis
Environmental scanning
Electronic discussion lists
User surveys
Internal staff surveys
Away days
External seminars, conferences and workshops
Shared experience sessions
Understanding uncertainty
'Information technology is very destabilising of structures of authority because I don't think there has ever been a period in my professional life when I felt so unconfident about my grasp of some of the most essential technologies that are driving the future of the operation I manage... displayed 300 characters
