A Study of the Diagnosis of the Health of University Library Organizations

대학도서관 조직건강성 진단에 관한 연구

The environment of the modern library is changing rapidly with advancements in information technology, massive increse in information, and with the changing needs of users for information in order to keep up with developments in science and technology. The library should also be in a constant state of change in accordance with the changing environment. But the current situation is that library organizations in Korea do not show any change. Here arises the need to diagnose the health of these organization. Organizational innovations can be achieved either by change in the organizational structure or administrative methods or in personal attitudes. In making organizational innovations, however, it is not sufficient only to change the organizational structure or the administrative methods without changing personal attitudes. The purpose of this thesis is to diagnose the health of university library organizations in Korea and to suggest prescriptions based on the results of this diagnosis, by means of organization development theory. In this study, the action research model and the diagnostic model were developed for the health of university library organization in Korea. The action research model consisted of 3 steps: diagnosis, intervention and evaluation. The diagnostic model comprised diagnostic criterion and diagnostic indicators. The health of an organization was selected as the diagnostic criterion. Diagnostic indicators were divided into 3 levels: personal job-satisfaction at the individual level, cohesiveness at the group level, and the organizational climate at the organizational level. Both the interview and the questionaire were used as diagnostic methods. The questionaire form was designed according to the Likert typle 5-point scale. For the investigation, 10 university libraries were selected from the private universities in Seoul, and questionaire sheets were sent to their 156 librarians and responses were received from 116 persons. An interview was carried out with a selected chief of departments of the library concerned. The results of the diagnosis show that the average personal job­satisfaction was 3.57, the group cohesiveness was 3.15 and organizational climate was 2.93, and accordingly the comprehensive health indicator was 3.22. The health of university library organizations in Korea was generally on the decline at all 3 levels. In particular, the organizational climate was in a very weak state. Most problems concern dissatisfaction with personnel policy, communications and non-professionally qualified directors. As the prescriptions, the following was suggested: institutionalization of the staff meeting for resolving problems with communication, appointement of professional directors, performance appraisal, conferring faculty status for librarians, and a suggest system. And for the improvement of the organizational climate, managerial grid training was suggested as one of the educational strategies for organizational development.