Introduction

This chapter will discuss some of the core management skills that are important for effective practice as a librarian. New entrants to the library profession should have an understanding of these basic skills and be able to translate the theory into practice in their organizations. The topics to be discussed are financial management, performance measurement, management of change, and the motivation and management of staff.

Financial management

One of the primary tasks that managers in any organization have is that of looking after budgets. Accountability for spending decisions can be a major responsibility, whatever the size of your budget: the basic principles underlying fiscal probity remain consistent, regardless of budget size. Remember that as a librarian making financial decisions, you are purchasing materials on behalf of your library and your users, and this means you must be accountable for all spending decisions you make.

The key to successful financial management is an understanding of how budgeting works within your organization. This is as simple as knowing how the financial year of your organization works; for example, in the UK, public libraries normally run a financial year from April to March, while universities run their financial year from August to July. You are far more likely to have more money to spend on resources at the beginning of the financial year than at the end, so understanding your organization's financial year will make planning for purchasing much more straightforward. This is especially the case if you need to make large purchases, such as of expensive pieces of equipment, or expensive subscriptions to databases.

How is your library funded?

A fundamental question for any manager is how the service he or she is managing is funded. There are several ways of allocating funds to departments within organizations, and these will be discussed below.

Top slicing

Working in an organization that uses top slicing for budgeting can be challenging. Top slicing essentially means that when the organization is allocating budgets to departments, it does so on the basis that essential services are allocated monies before non-essential services. For example, the university where the authors of this text work uses a top-slicing mechanism which means that registration services, administration, and library and information services and so on are funded before allocation is given to faculties.