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in academic libraries is a contentious area of library management This article outlines previous work in this area and describes a model of specific use in developing a duplication policy for recommended texts for undergraduates. A concept of 'user utility' is described as the principal measure of library effectiveness. This concept is used as a basis for a behavioural model of student borrowing. The model may be used to allocate a budget set aside for duplication purposes so as to maximize the expected user utility gained per pound spent by the library.JON WARWICK (b. 1957) took his first degree m Mathematics and Computmg, graduatmg m 1979. His postgraduate research was m library Operational Research (sponsored partly by the British Library) with his doctorate awarded in 1985. He is currently a Semor

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Purpose -This paper sets out to describe the development of problem-structuring methods within operations research (OR) and to suggest that these might define new areas of collaborative activity between library management and OR modellers. Design/methodology/approach -The paper identifies a requirement for the twenty-first century academic library to be flexible, inclusive and responsive to rapidly changing environments. The use of problem-structuring methods provides OR modellers with a methodological approach that can assist decision making under just these conditions, and so a management approach that places problem-structuring methods firmly within library planning processes is suggested. Findings -Since the rapid growth of library OR in the 1960s and 1970s (using primarily statistical and quantitative techniques) there has been a significant downturn in new applications and model developments within the last 20 years. This has coincided with a debate on the future of OR that has moved it away from the application of quantitative techniques, and the new paradigms evolving from that debate could stimulate a regeneration of interest in library OR. Originality/value -The paper explores a possible future for library OR. The application of OR methods within libraries has undoubtedly had its successes and a wider appreciation of the potential use of problem-structuring methods within library management could resolve many of the issues associated with planning library operations on the brink of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

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