Managing Your Library and its Quality

The ISO 9001 Way

Núria Balagué, Jarmo Saarti

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781843346548
• eBook ISBN: 9781780632797
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Information Management
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book, divided into two parts, provides an introduction to the quality management issues and gives a general overview to the use of ISO 9001 in the library environment. The second part presents the main features of ISO 9001: 2008 with practical comments and examples on how to implement its clauses in libraries. Whether in the public or in the private sector, libraries can be seen as service organisations: they act in very dynamic environments where users are increasingly demanding new types of services. Thus the adoption of a quality management system helps each library in meeting the needs of the customers. This book covers some key ideas about how to approach the ISO 9001 standard in library terms, or any other information service unit. Managing Your Library and its Quality offers not only a useful approach to quality but it is also an excellent guide on how to manage knowledge within organisations and, a priori, thus should be utilised by the information professional.- Helps guide the implementation of a quality management system using ISO 9001, a standard widely and successfully used already in all types of organisations around the world- Translates the ISO 9001 standard to the terms and language used within the libraries- Presents a systematic approach to the quality management in libraries

Part 1

Quality management issues and the use of ISO 9001 in the library environment

Introduction: quality management in the public sector

Abstract: In Part 1, Chapters 1-4 of this book, the quality management approaches in the public sector are discussed. The reader is also given a short history about the evolution of the ISO standards, quality management and quality management in libraries.

Key words: quality management; Libraries; Standards; ISO 9001

Quality management ideology began to have an impact on the public sector during the 1990s (see Poll and Boekhorst, 1996, which is a good summary of the development in academic libraries). Some of its principles, such as changes in the management of and evaluating and setting goals for results, were adapted from the private sector. A clear example of this was the so-called ‘new public management’ movement, which started using private sector instruments within the public sector:

…instruments of such policy interventions are institutional rules and organizational routines affecting expenditure planning and financial management, civil service and labour relations, procurement, organization and methods, and audit and evaluation. (Barzelay, 2001: 156)

These instruments can also be found in the descriptions of quality management in the Finnish public sector published by the Ministry of Finance (Sorri-Teir et al., 1998: 8). They list the pressures for the public sector actors as:

economic situation and continuing demands for savings;

results management: the need for development and goals set by the ministries;

ministries have demanded quality improvement from civil service departments;

budgeting has changed from sub-item specified to framework budgets;

clients require quality services and are eager to provide feedback;

civil service departments have become more independent and thus they have become more able to improve quality;

there has been a strong emphasis on TQM (total quality management) during the 1990s.

In addition to the developments triggered by the policymakers, there has also been a major change in how scientific information is disseminated that has affected university libraries and changed their ways of ‘doing business’. The traditional, reactive way of building and owning collections has, at least partly, changed to a more reactive way of intermediating the printed and electronic resources as part of the university’s learning and knowledge-creating processes (see, e.g., Huotari and Iivonen, 2005). On the other hand, libraries can be seen to be moving to become the knowledge management centres of their parent organisation (Parker et al., 2005).

Today, libraries face vast challenges as they move into the digital environment. There are a huge number of publications available, especially within bio- and health sciences; they are often the most expensive scientific journals. Increasingly, publishing of hard science is seen as a business and it has been claimed that commercial pricing bears little relation to production costs and is relatively immune to competitive pressures (see, e.g., Morgan Stanley, 2002; La Manna, 2003).

In the digital world, the library also faces competition from other providers of information, all competing for the same clientele. Clients have become more quality conscious and they want to participate in the development of information services within the campus. Information technology not only enables the interaction between clients and libraries but also provides opportunities to engage the active client in developing innovations (see, e.g., Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2000).

Management also faces novel challenges in this modern result- and profit-oriented culture. It has been quite difficult to define what is meant by a ‘result’ when one is trying to evaluate a university library. The results need to be quantifiable, but this is clearly problematic when one considers learning and the creation of new knowledge (see, e.g., Poll and Boekhorst, 1996; Quinn, 1997).

On the other hand, the consumer culture ideology can create inequality among users. Libraries have always defended the idea that all individuals should be able to utilise the library’s resources and services. However, they are now confronted by the fact that more and more digital resources are drifting away from open to restricted access. Goodman and Cohen (2004: 76) have defined two types of inequality: stigmatising inequality that exists in a direct, less ambiguous and more transparent manner, and anonymous inequality, the kind that is indirect and not the result of any deliberate intention. The digital revolution has clearly increased this anonymous inequality.

Unequal access poses major challenges for the management of university libraries. On the one hand, we live in a culturally more open and international environment that needs sophisticated and varied services, but, on the other, public sector decision-makers seem to want to reduce this sector as a participant in the economy and open almost all services to competition. Thus, in order to compete for resources, libraries need to create competitive services and base their evaluations on hard facts, which means that the workforce must be flexible, committed to lifelong learning and be highly trained. To sum up: more and better services have to be achieved while financial support is being reduced.

Universities are currently redefining their roles, taking into account both the market ideology (the concept of university which turns out a product) and the academic ideology (the seat of learning and the preserver of cultural values) (Vartiainen, 2004: 51). One outcome is that universit...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of figures and tables
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• About the authors
• Part 1: Quality management issues and the use of ISO 9001 in the library environment
• Part 2: Building your library’s quality management system according to the ISO 9001 standard
• References
• Index