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This paper (1) summarizes an investigation into the political and financial factors which inhibited the ready application of computers to individual academic libraries during the period 1967-71, and (2) presents the author's speculations on the future of libraries in a computer dominant society. Technical aspects of system design were specifically excluded from the investigation. Twenty-four institutions were visited and approximately one hundred persons interviewed.
Substantial future change is envisaged in both the structure and function of the library, if the emerging trend of coalescing libraries and computerized "information processing centers" continues.
SUMMARY OF MAJOR FACTORS WHICH INHIBITED THE APPLICATION OF COMPUTERS TO LIBRARY PROBLEMS, 1967-71
Major factors which inhibited the application of the computer to the library during the period 1967-71 can be categorized under three broad headings: (1) Governance, organization, and management of the computer facility; (2) personnel in the computer facility; and (3) deficiencies in the library environment.
GOVERNANCE, ORGANIZATION, AND MANAGEMENT OF THE COMPUTER FACILITY
1. Uncertainty over who was in charge of the computer facility. This problem was partly attributable to the fact that the goals and objectives of the facility were imprecisely stated or not stated at all. Often there was no charter, no systematic procedures for establishing priorities, and excessive autonomy by the computer facility. These factors often permitted the facility to operate as a self-directing, self-sustaining entity, responsible to no informed, upper-level manager.
2. Effect of high-level administrative changes. In a few instances, the library automation effort was instigated by the president of the institution. He could, in effect, personally direct the allocation of resources. However, whenever a high administrative official leaves, the resulting vacuum is quickly filled by other interests, the atmosphere changes, and his personal program goals dissolve.
3. Management inadequacies. The effects of domination by a technician or special interest group are described below in more detail. Although more and more organizations are putting together influential user groups to point the way toward better management, decision-making responsibility and author continued to be misplaced in a few institutions that vested authority for technical decisions in a committee of deans who were somewhat remote from current trends in computing because of their administrative responsibilities. (In one institution, it was half-jokingly stated that a dean in any hard...