Redesigning a Library’s Organizational Structure

Abstract

The evolution from print to electronic resources and services continues to pose significant challenges for academic libraries. This article presents a systematic, evidence-based approach to guide this transition, which resulted in an exhaustive reorganization of library staffing and services. The approach begins with the necessity of accumulating and then evaluating data on staff workloads and responsibilities. At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas Library, this evaluation revealed that a preponderant amount of time was still spent on print-related activities that were no longer considered to be library priorities. The corrective actions taken to remedy this misalignment are then discussed.

The Digital Disease in Academic Libraries

“…Silos are as common as books in academic libraries. Research for this article revealed a number of case studies of library reorganizations, all of which highlight the elimination of silos as a goal (Higa et al 2005;Ellis et al 2014;Goetsch, Haddock, and Stockham 2017). As was noted in the Digital Organizations section of this paper, the removal of silos typically involves flattening the reporting hierarchy, or carefully aligning the form of the library with its function.…”

“…Here, too, additional work is required in order to maintain clarity and prevent conflict. A common tactic for addressing these issues is to overlay another form of organization: libraries may layer team-or cluster-based mechanisms for work coordination (De Klerk and Euster 1989;Higa et al 2005). This makes cross-functional teams and matrix-style management structures common, but these structures have well-known problems (Davis and Lawrence 1978).…”

The Blended Librarian and the Disruptive Technological Innovation in the Digital World

“…This modified their routines demanding other type of knowledge, including website design. The team members found that is was more and more difficult to determine priorities of the multiple departments, along with a concern for the poor performance of some librarians [3]. The continuous emergence of new means of educational communication makes libraries and librarians redesign learning common spaces and areas in order to attract more users.…”

Organizational Approaches to Electronic Resource Acquisition

“…The most recent article highlighting library reorganization discusses how the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Library decided in 2002 that too much work was distributed among teams (an organizational change made in 1998) and made radical changes in department structure to better accommodate workflows for digital resources. This reorganization retained an Information Resources Development Team, however, thus maintaining a multi-department, broadly representative group for acquisition decisions (Higa, Bunnett, and Maina 2005).…”

“…66) point out that even with the changes, an over-reliance on individual "experts" and a lack of central tracking still hinder their system. Even the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Library, mentioned earlier, discusses a significant change to departmental organization because its system for managing electronic resources was too distributed (Higa, Bunnett, and Maina 2005).…”