Reference Services Review, 35, no. 3
Library and IT Mergers: How successful are they?
By Steve McKinzie
Can academic libraries and Information Technology Services worktogether closely? The answer is certainly yes. They can and have done so since the dawn of automation. One could even go so far as to say that the decades-old collusion between libraries and their IT counterparts has been enormously fruitful. It has certainly been fascinating, although the relationship has been more than a little strained at times. Even so, in recent years the bondbetween the two has grown more intimate. The combination of their shared commitment to the effective management of information and the library’s increased dependence on digital resources has brought the two together. It has led to a bevy ofactual organizational mergers, the joining of these very distinct campus entities into a single unit -- what the British like to call, converged operations.
This part of the August issue of Reference Services Review focuses on the results, the actual service dimensions, of these recently-integrated groupings. We want to know how well merged library and IT Services work. Do their creators and instigators, deans and CIOs, see them as effective? Do the rank-and-file librarians and IT professionals believe such groupings work well? And what about the users themselves: do such mergers serve them efficaciously? Do mergers, in short, benefit their clients?
To answer these and like questions, we take adecidedly empirical approach. Our authors use surveys and in depth case studies to grapple with the usefulness of a number of IT/Library mergers. Their conclusions are intriguing. Here is what our issue holds.
John Stemmer, the Director of Library Service at BellarmineUniversity, authors the first article and provides what is perhaps our issue’s most broad-ranging and comprehensive approach to the merger question. His article, “The Perception of Effectiveness of Merged Information Service Organizations,” surveys sixteen deans and twenty-five Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from twenty-nine of the forty-six institutions in the Carnegie Bachelor Institutions Group who report having a “Merged Information Service Organization (MISO). Stemmer sees these two groups, Deans and CIOs of institutions where mergers have occurred, as having a decided measure of objectivity. Their responses and Stemmer’s analysis suggest that a number of these mergers work relatively well from both the institutional and administrative point of view. The author notes that some mergers suffer from a loss of staff focus. At others, staff hasto be retrained to get a sense of where they fit into the merged picture. Even so, these key academic administrators, those who led and instigated mergers at a number of institutions, regard their mergers as relatively effective and generally successful.
Deborah Ludwig and Jeffrey Bullington’s article entitled, “Libraries and IT: Are We There Yet?” takes a similar approach to Stemmer’s. They rely on surveys to assess their converged library and information technology services at the University of Kansas, and their cautiously-positive conclusions mirror Stemmer’s. Their surveys, however, reflect a longer period of time, and they focus on the actual users of their services – the faculty and students who stand to lose or gain the most from a merged information service organization. The first group of surveys which Ludwig and Bullington examine entails several from 1991 to 1993. They also include a 1995 end user poll. The authors argue that these early surveys contributed to the administrative 1996 decision to create a combined KU Library Information Service, and the later LibQual+Surveys of 2000, 2003 and 2006, which the two scrutinize in detail, confirm the wisdom of that choice.
In addition, the authors personally interview a host of the University’s faculty and information service leaders. Those interviewed insist that it is coordination between ITprofessionals and librarians that is the real goal of such mergers. Organizational structure itself means very little to them. For their part, the authors contend that the real promise of the merged organization lies in the future. As their richly-detailed article reminds us,converged organizations at institutions such as University of Kansas are in something of an adolescent stage. No one who really wants to understand how effective such mergers can become should be put off by that. It isn’t as if such organizations are there yet. As Ludwig and Bullington claim, “they are almost there.”
Neal Baker and Tom Kirk at EarlhamCollege, a much smaller institution, offer a third article – a case study – a carefully-crafted account of a small college’s decisions to coordinate closely its IT and library functions, entitled “Merged Service Outcomes at EarlhamCollege.” The current coordinated approach began after the retirement of Earlham’s IT director in 2001. Tom Kirk, Earlham’s Library Director, then assumed the additional title of the Coordinator of Information Services, a title deliberately chosen to reflect an “integrated organization that merges services but not”necessarily “organizational structures.” The new approach enabled the Library and Information Services to collaborate closely on a number of coordinated projects. They jointly taught new student orientation sessions, created an ad hoc task force to address campus copyright issues, integrated service points in the information commons, and established a proxy server for off-campus access.
What is more, both LibQual and MISO surveys confirmthe success of their approach. As the authors insist, the institutional changes at Earlham did not reflect a newly perceived theoretical plan for library and IT services. Rather, the leadership responded to local conditions. They created an evolving organization that met the needs of their users.
The underlining theme that Baker and Kirk’s article illustrates so well -- the commitment to making things work together creatively rather than according to a preconceived theoretical model -- finds a fascinating counterpart in our fourth and final series article. Carolyn Mary Walters and Elizabeth Ann Van Gordon write about planning for collaborative innovation at the University of Indiana Blomington (IUB). Their article, “Get it in Writing: MOUs and Library/IT Partnerships” catalogs the attempts of the University’s Libraries and the University’s IT division, University and Technology Services (UTIS), to develop a creative and effective partnership – one which managed and served a large university information commons facility. At the onset of the venture, the two units created a MOU, a memorandum of understanding, a document that established the framework for the ongoing relationship and set the ground work for what the authors call the “rules of engagement.” The MOU in this instance turned out to be enormously effective in working through librarian and IT professional differences and in making the information commons an outstanding success for their users.
So there you have it: four articles with widely divergent perspectives about academic Library/IT collusions. Stemmer’sarticle is in no sense an apologetic for mergers, but his comprehensive analysis suggests that some of the textbook merged organizations do work rather well, although at least one dean regrets the decision to merge and another CIO wishes things were different. Ludwig and Bullington at Kansas Universityhonestly report that their merged organization has not yet arrived, but they are, as they say, getting there, which is no small thing. Baker and Kirk at Earlham laud their partnership with IT – a notion corroborated by Carolyn Mary Walters and Elizabeth Ann Van Gordon’s contention that getting it in writing, hammering out a MOU is the wisest course in library/IT partnering.
Of course, the articles invite some interesting questions. If some mergers seem to be working well, as our articles suggest, and others less so, what should we conclude about the service dimension of merged organization? Why do some things work in some places and not in others? My sense is that the answer has a lot to do with local conditions and personal leadership. There is no silver bullet, no magic structure that will somehow serve your users better or help your clients more efficiently. Rather you have to build an organization that takes into consideration local needs and professional cultures. Then you have to have a leadership that can make people and services work well together.
Trade unionism elevated the plight of American industrial workers at the turn of the nineteenth-century. The whole country benefited in the process. Yet however valuable it proved, most Americans refuse to believe that unionism is the sole answer to all the country’s work situations, at least not in a global economy. Sometimes open shop benefits the laborers. Sometimes workers are better off altogether without a union. Library/IT mergers are like that. Sometimes they work splendidly. Sometimes they are a disaster. Choosing to merge or not can be like trying to decide whether to unionize or not. You have to keep in mind what you are after. For companies, the goal is profits and a well-paid productive work force. For academic institutions, the goal is a superb library and IT coordination that serves faculty and students effectively.
As in the case with unions and companies, leadership is also a key part of the mix. If one can get union leaders and management to understand each and work together, you have a formula for success. Similarly, if you can establish close working IT/Library relationships in an academic institution through a well-articulated MOU or with a leadership similar to that at Earlham and KU, you can scarcely go wrong.
Our four articles illustrate that mergers work -- and work very well -- provided you’ve the right approach, stellar leadership: and sensitivity to user needs. Our authors make clear that in such endeavors some things have to be kept clearly in mind. Service and real cooperation among staff and professionals are the central goals of merged service organizations. Beyond that, nothing else matters.
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