June 29, 2006
October 26, 2006, revised.
The library promotes the reform according to making to the corporation with each National University Corporation under the situation called the reduction in the budget and the number of staffs because of a severe national finance and the sharp decreases of the number of youth who enter university by the falling birthrate. In addition, the library is expected to play a center role of the process to create a new scholarly communication model as an alternative of the past expense structure to the scholarly information resource that is reaching the limit of financial power of the university so that the library may support the university system as the place of succession and creation of knowledge from the side of the scholarly information distribution.
The role is to escape from the informatioN oligopoly of the major commercial scientific publishers and to construct a system which reproduces, develops and maintains the global scholarly communication in the academic world. The significance of existence of the library can be made clearer in and outside the university by trying to disseminate the scholarly information literacy in parallel with system construction.
To accomplish such a purpose, the library manager should adjust to one of the business objectives to establish the following systematic competencies. Those are (A) the ability to be familiar with a current trend of the publication field and to confront the electronic journal publishers, (B) the ability to design, develop and maintain an system for accumulation and dissemination of digital information, such as an institutional repository, (C) the ability to expand the scholarly information literacy education to create users who can resolve problems by themselves, (D) the ability to give account to the interested parties in and outside the university, (E) the ability to organize and maintain the functional group who have trained for advanced professional skills and to make public policies for them. The modern library services and their management should be operated based on one or more these competencies which are strengthened and established.
In this seminar, two experiencers of university librarian make lectures on each case. One lecture is on the management practice to realize the service base on the abundant electronic journal titles. The other is on his experience as a professional of library service in the small private university. These two lectures will highlight the way of library management which is directly linked to the quantity and quality of library services. All participants are expected to catch on the systematic competencies cultivated in their experiences and to discuss deeper in the follow-up panel discussion.