Library Services in Theory and Context

Chapter 4: Library Services and their Users as a System

Library services as systems

As noted in the previous chapter, the scope of this book is the provision of library services, the users of them, and the nature of the relationship and interactions between them. Considering library services in the absence of consideration of the people who use them would seem to have little meaning and less benefit.

From this perspective, it is meaningful to consider library services (and their users) as a system of interacting parts.¹ In fact, we can go further and make some general statements about the nature of this system in the terminology of systems theory.

It is an "open" system. In other words, the activities that take place in the provision and use of library services are not isolated from the rest of the world. Indeed, what takes place in the provision and use of library services appears to be highly susceptible to interference by and interaction with things external to the system as defined:

• dock strikes delay the acquisition of materials;
• floods and earthquakes may affect the building;
• users may decide at any time to switch to some other source of information: another library perhaps, a book shop, or a friend;
• a message for somebody inside the library may interrupt activities;
• changes in the outside world may affect the resources and goal of the library service.

We need not labor the point. The assertion is merely that we can define the library service, the users, and the interactions between them as a "system" of sorts. There is no suggestion that this can be viewed as self-contained.

It is a "large" system. The basic concept of a library is quite simple: some books are placed on the shelves and one or more users may use one or more of the books. Closer inspection, however, reveals that there are many possible interactions. Any one of a large number of people may use the library. When doing so, that one person may interact with one or more documents, with one or more of many indexes, with library staff, with other users. The books are interrelated with each other and with the catalogs and indexes through common authorship, through being about the same sorts of things, through referring to each other directly and indirectly. The consequences in the library may also vary widely: purchasing one book may preclude buying another, longer opening hours may mean less reference service, a noisy user may distract another.

Libraries are generally small in organizational terms. Libraries generally take up limited space and employ few people.² Great libraries with an annual budget over $10 million are very rare. However, libraries are invariably "large" or, rather, complex in the terminology of systems theory wherein largeness refers not to the budget, the cubic footage, or other physical features but to the complexity of the interactions.

An important property of systems is their ability to respond to changes, to adapt themselves to their environments, and to maintain sufficient stability to survive. The characteristics of library services in this regard seem contradictory. Library services are generally regarded as being weak on the features needed for adaptation and stability—feedback on what is happening in library use is generally weak, incomplete, or lacking; the goals of library services are usually vague; library services are often criticized for being rather unresponsive; and librarians have little or no control over the environment.³ On the other hand, library services do exhibit some of the characteristics of systems that are adaptable: library services may have serious problems but rarely dramatic crises; and the popular stereotypic image of libraries is as safe, suitable places for timid persons to work rather than adventurous, action-oriented "change agents."⁴ Even more significantly, library services do, in fact, survive. In other words, there is a paradox: library services do not appear to have the usual characteristics of adaptability, but they do share the crucial feature of adaptive systems—survival. We shall return to this paradox in the final chapter.

Controls and responses

We have deliberately chosen to view library services, their users, and the interactions between them as a system. This approach is chosen not only because it is believed to be helpful for the development of theory, but also because any theory developed with an emphasis on the interactions would seem more likely to be of some usefulness in practical application -- in making the provision and/or the use of library services more effective in some sense. How do the parts relate to each other? How might they relate? What actions or relationships might be more (or less) effective (or economical) with respect to specific goals or outcomes?

Notions of "control" are central to the study of systems. Control, however, is perhaps too strong a term. What is of interest is what responses are made. How do parts of the system react to stimuli? How do the responses and interactions of parts combine to form the response of the system as a whole? It is the process of response to stimuli which constitutes the means of change and adaptation, either by internal alteration or by altering the environment. Responses to opportunities and to threats are the essence of achieving goals.

What sorts of controls or responses are at work in the provision and use of library services? Five distinct sorts of responses appear to characterize retrieval-based information services, including library services.

1. Inquiry can be viewed as the response to curiosity or to distressing ignorance. It is, ordinarily, an inquiry which causes information retrieval systems to be used.
2. Retrieval can be viewed as a response to inquiries. Inquiries are posed to the retrieval system which responds with a set of retrieved signals. One looks in a card catalog or searches at a terminal expecting a useful response in the form of cards or messages bearing data appropriate to the inquiry.
3. Becoming informed is the term we use to denote the process whereby people's personal knowledge changes in response to the messages they receive. (One could have used the term "information" to denote this process, but it would be ambiguous since the term "information" is more commonly used to denote the data, signals, or messages, i.e., the stuff as well as the process.)
4. The demand for library service is a response to perceived need and the perception of opportunity to do something to meet that need. The scale and nature of the demand will vary in response to a variety of stimulating or inhibiting factors.
5. The allocation of resources to and within library services responds to preferences and perceptions by those who have resources to allocate. The actual allocation determines in detail the provision of library services.

At this stage, we merely note and briefly define these five types of "control" or, as we prefer, response. We shall examine each in detail in Part II, chapters 6 to 12 and the interactions between them in Part III, chapter 13.

Some related systems

We have judged it useful to define our system as including library service, the users, and the interactions between them. Anything else is defined as being part of the environment (i.e., outside the system as defined). Defining the boundaries of a system is a rather arbitrary process, especially when dealing with "open" systems. One could redefine the boundaries of the system so that importantly related aspects of the environment come to be considered part of a larger system.

We have already noted that what we have defined is an "open" system capable of affecting and being affected by its environment. It is also important to remember that parts of the system may simultaneously be parts of other systems also. Library users are parts of other systems (universities, disciplines, families, occupational groups), and their information-gathering behavior can be expected to range over numerous other systems in addition to the library service, e.g., colleagues, newspapers, bookshops, other libraries, meetings. A given library service will be only one part of any given user's range of information.⁵

Libraries not only have their own internal systems and procedures, but also participate in at least three other, wider sorts of systems: the larger political framework (e.g., university, city, school, firm); the universe of publishing and bibliographical control (e.g., book trade, indexes, citations); and systems of libraries and librarianship (e.g., the professional customs of librarians, and other libraries). Libraries depend significantly on other libraries for interlibrary loans and, more recently, on the collective use of computerized bibliographical utilities. The attitudes and initiatives of the profession of librarians and of schools educating librarians can also stimulate or inhibit the development of library services. Both libraries and their users are intimately involved in the complex and continuously changing web of human knowledge.

So far we have asserted a need for theory, we have described the scope of our present interests, and we have suggested that it would be beneficial to view library services and their users as systems. In the next chapter, we consider what sort of theory would be appropriate when considering library services.

Go to Chapter 5

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¹ Other examples of attempts to view library services as systems include 1. Orr, Libraries as Communications Systems (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977); and D. Smith, Systems Thinking in Library and Information Management (New York: Bingley, 1980). See also M. P. Marchant, Participative Management in Academic Libraries (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976), esp. chapter 2 "The Library as an Open System."

² A survey of libraries in Indiana in 1973 illustrates the overwhelming numerical predominance of small libraries. The median annual expenditure on books and educational materials (and range) was for public libraries, $4,400 ($202-$591,550); for school libraries, $1,994 ($150-$14,000); for college and university libraries, $38,383 ($1,500-$1,070,501); and special libraries, $6,712 ($315-$120,496). The median annual expenditure for salaries (and range) was: public, $11,489 ($360-$1,960,302); school, $9,300 ($136- $44,000); college and university, $62,000 ($5,000-$1,319,156); and special libraries, $18,500 ($3,841- $581,897). It seems reasonable to suppose that small libraries were more likely to have been omitted from the survey than large ones. Hence, these figures probably overstate the actual sizes. See B. E. Markuson, The Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority: A Plan for the Future (Indianapolis: Indiana State Library, 1974), appendix A. A reasonably complete survey of any region can be expected to yield a similar, highly skewed distribution.

³ Of course librarians seek to influence their environment. Cf. J. R. Euster, The Academic Library Director: Management Activities and Effectiveness (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987).

⁴ One may not agree and one may deplore such views. Nevertheless, that is the prevailing opinion and it has not been contradicted by studies of the personality traits of librarians who emerge as lacking the traits which are most closely associated with forceful leadership. See P. R. Douglass, "The Personality of the Librarian," Ph.D. dissertation (University of Chicago, Graduate Library School, 1957); P. D. Morrison, "The Career of the Academic Librarian: A Study of the Social Origins, Educational Attainments, Vocational Experience: and Personality Characteristics of a Group of American Academic Librarians," D. L. S dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, School of Librarianship, 1961). A. McMahon, The Personality of the Librarian (Occasional Papers in Librarianship, Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 5, 1967). J. Agada, "Assertion and the Librarian Personality," Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, vol. 42 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1987), pp. 144-214.

⁵ A. Campbell and C. A. Metzner, Public Use of the Library and Other Sources of Information (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 1950), esp. pp. 11-14; C.-C. Chen et al., Citizen Information Seeking Patterns: A New England Study. Executive Summary Report (Boston, Mass.: Simmons College, School of Library Science, 1979), (ERIC report ED 186 031) pp. 6-7.

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