No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

D. Litt. et Phil. / The South African academic information services are starting to pay attention to the role played by instruction librarians. There is an acknowledgement that librarians as ‘educators’ need to learn how to teach information literacy skills. Instruction librarians are either not trained educators or do not have a pedagogical background. Many instruction librarians were placed in, or found themselves, assuming a teaching role with regard to information literacy instruction, and subsequently refined their craft while on the job. The motivation for this study was that librarians as ‘educators’ are faced with challenges that impact on their teaching role. They have to understand the teaching methodologies and the application of adult learning principles to the facilitation of information literacy skills programmes. The success of facilitation and development of information literacy skills programmes depends on the instruction librarians’ ability to work in collaboration with academic departments, curriculum designers and other librarians. The study was carried out in two parts: a literature survey and an empirical investigation. The investigation was confined to academic libraries and information services that have an instruction librarian or subject librarian who facilitates information literacy skills instruction. The GAELIC (Gauteng and Environs Library Consortium) members were surveyed in order to limit the study to the nine participating libraries within the consortium. The findings of the study were supportive of the objective that there is a desperate need to have understanding, knowledge and skills regarding the dynamics involved in the teaching of information literacy skills, in order to make the programme a success. The study proposes a competency framework for implementation as a management tool for designing key performance areas (KPA’s) of instruction librarians.

The research question of this thesis is ???what is the relationship between evaluation procedures and organisational learning in an academic library???? The study investigates the nature of organisational learning within Taiwanese institute of technology academic libraries, and in particular the nature of the relationship between the formal institutional evaluation (IE) of those libraries by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the organisational responses of the libraries. A ???process, phase of organisational learning (PPOL)??? model guided the delineation of research variables and the collection and analysis of data. The subjects of the research were 67 academic libraries and their staff. Phase I of the study consisted pf a questionnaire survey of 312 staff. The results of the survey formed the basis of Phase II of the study, the semi-structured interviews with 24 library personnel, together with an examination of relevant documents of the particular libraries involved. The refinement of the PPOL model is an indication that generally the direction and the use of IE, while recognised by management and employees, do not in most cases translate into higher levels of organisational learning and change. The findings of this thesis apply to the particular types of libraries studied, and to the concept of evaluation and organisational learning. Libraries are automatically to some extent involved in self-evaluation because they must prepare for IE, with some assistance from their institution. However, this does not imply that if various changes occur in the libraries there must be a strong correlation with the existence of high organisational learning. The external nature of the evaluation and the lengthy time periods between evaluations are two factors which make the learning response of libraries more difficult to determine. Ideally, an IE will assist the library on a path of continuous organisational adaptation, which involves structural, communication and climate changes. These changes reflect the ongoing organisational learning activities.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the leader behavior of library directors in medium size academic libraries and the influence of the director on selected goal setting activities and goal achievement. Hypotheses were developed to determine if relationships existed between: (1) the leader behavior of library directors as perceived by middle management supervisors and self-perceptions of leader behavior by the director; (2) the middle management perceptions of leader behavior of the directors and the existence of selected goals as perceived by middle --management supervisors; and (3) the middle management perceptions of leader behavior of the directors and the level of goal achievement as perceived by middle management supervisors. The population for the study was identified as medium size academic libraries associated with universities accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Directors and middle management supervisors in twenty-four universities participated in the study. Participants responded to the Leadership Behavior Description Questionnarie XII and a Selected List of Goal Setting Activities developed for the study. The Hotelling T2 and the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient were used to analyze the data.FindingsThe LBDQ-XII mean scores for directors were higher on all subscales than the mean scores for subordinate supervisors.A significant difference was found in leader behavior of directors of academic libraries as perceived by subordinates and self-perceptions by the directors.The subscale of Consideration clearly contributed to the rejection of null Hypothesis I at the .05 level of significance.The subscales of Initiating Structure, Tolerance of Freedom, Production Emphasis, and Predictive Accuracy provided some evidence of a joint contribution to rejection of the hypothesis of no difference. However, the contribution was not great enough for any of the four factors to be independently significant with a critical value derived by application of a conservative Post Hoc t test at the .05 level of significance.Seventy-six percent of all responses for goal existence were circled yes.No correlation was found between middle management perceptions of library director behavior and perceptions about the existence of goals.An average score of 20.832 was observed for goal achievement for all participating libraries. The highest attainable score for achievement on all goals would have been 11.000 and the lowest 55.000.No correlation was found between middle management perceptions of library director behavior and perceptions about the level of goal achievement.Conclusions1. Directors of middle size academic libraries and subordinates do not agree on perceived behavior of library directors on either the Person or the System Dimensions. Library director perceptions are higher on the consideration factor of the People Dimension. Thatrelationships between the director and middle management supervisors as exhibited by trust, respect, and friendship, than are perceived by the middle management supervisors.2. The mean number of yes responses from each respondent indicates a general acceptance of selected goals in middle size academic libraries at the department level is, library directorsperceive stronger social.3. Based on the average response to goal achievement, middle management supervisors generally perceived that the selected goals are being achieved to a moderate degree in middle size academic libraries.4. The LBDQ-XII offers one method of examining the leadership style of an academic library director.