Why have a self-managed team organization?
The simple answer is that it is consonant with the University and University Libraries strategic plans. Perhaps more important though, there are underlying forces which make such an organization imperative. It is well understood that scholarly information essential to the research and teaching enterprise is proceeding through a dramatic transformation that is driven by the use of networked information technology. It is also true that academic libraries are among the most intensively IT-networked organizations within higher education. They are subject to the “transforming” effects of networked IT in the way other organizations have been. It follows that academic libraries–which deal in scholarly information content–will change. They may do so passively buffeted by these external forces. We choose not to respond in this way to the much-talked-about “paradigm shift.” Instead, we must seize the opportunities presented by this transformational circumstance that was described a decade ago
