HOW DO ACADEMIC LIBRARIES MANAGE CHANGE IN THE 21 ST CENTURY

Abstract

“Change is not what it used to be”, so says Charles Handy in his 1990 book The Age of Unreason. According to Handy, change is different today because it is discontinuous. Change does not follow a pattern any more, and its unpredictability is “confusing and disturbing”. Handy believes this kind of contemporary chaotic change calls for “discontinuous upside-down thinking to deal with it”; hence, the “un-reasonableness” of the age we live in. But librarians, of course, on the whole are a very reasonable group of people. The idea of “up-side-down thinking”, of radical and unpredictable change does not appeal to us. We, like most people, would rather avoid change altogether, or if we can “manage” change, we like to think that we can bring order out of the current chaos that we face”.