Library and information science education

Reorganization of a very small academic library: a case study of Maine maritime academy's Nutting Memorial Library

“…Librarians at these institutions may feel overwhelmed reading literature about larger institutions with greater resources at their disposal to conduct a comprehensive change of the organization. Crumpton (2015) recommends the use a variety of measures for determining the current state of the library before a change process, including surveys, organizational assessments, "outside consultants, internal surveys, and creation of task forces as a method of assessment" (p. 39). However, this type of in-depth evaluation is often impossible in the tiny library, where budget cuts have eliminated any bandwidth for these kinds of in-depth evaluations conducted by the few remaining staff who are tasked with the management and operations of the library.…”

“…The field of change management has produced many articles and books that describe how to conduct a change process, what initiates a change process, and how to determine if that process was successful. There is consensus that change can be successful when all stakeholders are involved in the process, understand the need for change, buy into the organization's vision for the future and feel prepared for their new roles within the organization (Auster and Taylor, 2004; Carillo and Gregory, 2019; Crumpton, 2015; Gremmels, 2013; Novak and Day, 2015; Wheeler and Holmes, 2017). Tusa summarizes these findings, and writes that “open and frank communication plays an important role in the successful outcome of any reorganization project, not only for the purpose of buy-in but also for the sake of making change less painful due to possibly shattered expectations” (Tusa, 2019, p. 164).…”