Risk Management: It’s Implications for Library and Information Centres
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Date
2005-11-10
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Publisher
INFLIBNET Centre
Abstract
The development and dissemination of information in various forms and media on a local,
national and international level has envisaged the librarians to be advocative in all means
of information service provided from their libraries. Higher education is experiencing a
dramatic influx with a new generation of faculty with different sources of information. This
article deals with the definition of risk management and identification of the various areas of
risks in library environment. The applications of risk management in libraries start from the
collection development, through publishers / vendors for different types of documents. The
different types of risk include:
Assessing the organization
Collection management
Access rights by the users
Scholarly communication
Risks associated with the migration
Consortia
Staff training and recruitment
Preservation
Use of technology by the students, faculty and library staff.
The strategies for managing the risks are explained for the following:
By having discussions, group meetings, etc, the information requirements of users,
faculty and students can be found;
Communicating with other agencies like library schools, professional associations
for finding out the latest syllabus, in order to develop the content accordingly.
Detailed discussion with publishers / vendors for collection management covering
all aspects of the future needs /demands / changes;
For collecting the resources from external sources, resource sharing and access to
the databases along with Internet;
Consortium approach for collection development, content management, information
services and preservation;
Hiring staff with competitive skills and also develop skills for the existing staff, by
providing in-house training; and
Preservation aspect could be resolved by consortia approach by discussing the
formats, storage medium, software availability, upgradation of hardware, etc.
The author concluded that the library professionals should take all precautions of risk
management and provides risk free managerial services to the users on time.
Description
Keywords
Risk Management, Academic Libraries, Consortium, Collection management, Scholarly communication.