An organisational model for university libraries in transition

Abstract

Every university has a university library that has been there from the start. And at the start, the situation was relatively simple. There was a library, almost always located in one building, very often in the middle of the university buildings. It was the place where staff and students went to gather scientific information and to study. It was the pride of many universities. The library’s organisation contained a number of departments, one for every separate activity (selection, acquisition, cataloguing, etc.) and sometimes also for separate parts of the collection (manuscripts, reference collection, etc.). But, of course, not all the university’s books were contained in this library. Professors had their own books which were located in their own rooms. And gradually many professors built their own collection which was also available for their scientific staff. They gradually became libraries for an institution. In the second half of the 20th century, a lot of attention has been given to universities as organisations. National ministries strived towards guidelines that were directed at more efficiency. More or less professional managers became part of the university’s organisational structure. Faculties were reorganised, institutions became formalised departments and the institutions’ libraries were redefined as parts of the faculty’s infrastructure. And notwithstanding a lot of resistance, the library facilities within a faculty were merged into a small number and often one faculty library.