A survey was conducted to investigate public library directors' use of the Federal-State Cooperative System for Public Library Data and the Public Library Data Service reports. This article highlights the uses directors made of statistics and the aspects of statistics that they found particularly useful. (Contains 51 references.) (Author/AEF)

Offers practical advice to new library committee chairs on when to call meetings and how to prepare for, conduct, and evaluate them. Discusses the quality of committee leadership in terms of coaching, communicating, and troubleshooting skills. (Author/AEF)

Identifies attributes that directors of the academic libraries in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) need. Present-day directors must possess a wide variety of attributes and are less likely to remain in the same position for as long as their predecessors did. With the aging population of academic librarians, matching the right individual…

Reflects on the outcomes of a project undertaken in 1997-98 and examines issues relating to the development of the managerial expertise that underpins the library and information services in Latin America and the Caribbean. Reviews the literature, summarizes results of surveys of schools of Librarianship and Information Sciences and a small…

Using the Delphi technique, this paper continues to develop a set of attributes that Association of Research Libraries directors of today and the near future will need to possess. The questions remaining are: How does the list of attributes change in other organizational settings? and Where can each attribute best be acquired? (Author/AEF)

From an organizational approach to virtual or digital libraries (V/DL), this study places V/DL in the context of the academic library, focusing on relevant opinions of library heads. Findings suggest that the library heads typically understand V/DL as digital materials, are mainly supportive of V/DL understood in this way, and demonstrate the…

This study counted managers of academic, public, and special libraries to determine the number of managers by gender. Findings indicate male managers outnumber females in large public libraries and large/medium-large academic libraries; however, the overall numbers give females a three-to-one advantage in management. (AEF)

This case study describes the management system of Dickinson College Library. Highlights include a rotating chair instead of a director; collegiality in decision making; rotating departmental responsibilities; developing an acceptable level of expertise in both technical and public services; and an emphasis on professionalism. (Author/LRW)

Presents three perspectives on the future of library acquisitions. Discussion includes changing roles of academic administrators and acquisition librarians; acquisitions management and the role of the digital library; and technological development and the professional character of acquisitions. (AEF)

Provides an overview of administrative issues in supporting interdisciplinary library use at large universities. Topics include information resources; cataloging and classification; library services to users, including library use education and reference services; library organization; the campus context; and the politics of interdisciplinarity.…