University library administrators and assistants: attitudes toward librarianship

Abstract

Because of the wide acceptance and rapid expansion of programs in continuing education, greater demands are being placed on peripheral institutions acting as service organizations to this dynamic educational movement. In the area of para-educational professions, librarianship is perhaps the one most heavily strained in its efforts to meet the increasing demands for services and personnel. With augmented services, enlarged facilities and up-dated methods of production are needed much more, and both of these depend not only on more staff members but also on more competent performance on their part. Since it is difficult to staff libraries with all the professional personnel deemed advisable, the problem has been remedied, to some extent, by employing technical personnel, who are either trained on the job or complete courses for library technicians offered by vocational institutions. As the relationship of administrators with professional and technical employees is different from that with hourly wage earners, the experience of the members of the proression ought to be one or the most reliable sources to provide guidelines ror productive development.The responsibility for the projection of worthy professional standards is vested in the professional membership, and the transmission of an accurate and well-defined image could possibly be accomplished through a perceptive and understanding relationship between superordinate and subordinate personnel. It has been postulated by J.W. Getzels that "the nature of this relationship is the crucial factor in the administrative process."1 1. J.W. Getzels, "Administration as a Social Process,n W.G. Bennis, K.D. Benne and R. Chin, The Planning of Change, New York, Holt, Rinehart and winston, 1964, P. 377.