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The changing world of the executive
262
Book reviews
arranged by subject headings-general bibliographies and reference works, constitutional documents, law codes, other general legislative documents, general party documents, general statistics, other general sources of documentation, international relations, political and ideological affairs, military affairs, economic affairs, social affairs, cultural affairs, and leaders’ works. Individual entries follow standard bibliographical format and appear in the original language; Cyrillic entries are transliterated according to the Library of Congress system. An English translation of each title is also given. If a published translation in English, or failing this in French or German, exists, it is noted. The vast majority of items were inspected by the contributors and are briefly annotated. Those not seen are thus marked, and that they represent such a small proportion of the whole is indicative of the zeal of both the compilers and the organizations through which the material was obtained. The layout of each section is clear, with various typefaces used to distinguish headings and entries, thus facilitating easy use. The USSR section, which includes all union republics, accounts for more than half of the bibliography with its 1560 entries, reflecting the degree of interest generated in the West. The section covering Albania contains 83 items, Bulgaria 101, Czechoslovakia 110, GDR 156, Hungary 244, Yugoslavia 138, Poland 177, Romania 266 and the final section devoted to international and multinational publications 41 entries. There is a full list of abbreviations used and the index covers all titles, authors, editors and compilers of works cited in main entries and annotations. It is the first such bibliography, and certainly the most extensive, to cover this area and should prove invaluable to researchers, librarians and others with a particular interest in this field. The concise introductions to each chapter are a useful means of refreshing one’s memory of key background events and place the works listed into context. The additional information on translations and other bibliographies and works indirectly linked to the item concerned is again invaluable. Inevitably it will be difficult and time-consuming for researchers to gain access to many of the works listed here, but it is nevertheless reassuring to know that such a bibliography, drawing together as it does a wealth of information on material notoriously hard to track down, does now exist. D. E. Kemsley School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London
Peter F. Drucker. The changing world of the executive. London, 0 434 90406 6. 210.95.
Heineman,
1982.
27 1 pp. ISBN
Peter Drucker is probably the most widely read writer on management today. There will be few managers of information and library services who will not have at least one of his titles, probably in paperback, sitting well-thumbed on their own bookshelves at home. The practice of management, Managing for results and The age of discontinuity are titles which to date have had the greatest relevance to our daily work. His ideas are positive, perceptive and relate to managing today. The last point is important, for in the 1980s we cannot concentrate totally on building the brave new world of tomorrow without relating it closely to the world of today. If we do, it could be at the cost of not
Book
reviews
263
existing tomorrow. So today’s manager is facing major problems of resource allocation and making decisions involving cutbacks in expenditure whilst, at the same time, planning ahead for the future. And this against a background of profound technological change. Never has a time held so many opportunities and challenges. But the question is, “how do you remain positive and also convince those you work for, and those who work with you, that there are challenges and a bright future ahead?’ Drucker’s latest publication is a collection of articles which are most rewarding when dipped into when needing inspiration. He even has some points to make about matters particularly pertinent to the information game. ‘The critical problem will be not how to get or how to process information but rather to define what information really is. ’ ‘The third industrial revolution will be knowledge based. ’ ‘All of us should have learned in the last ten years that there are no free resources. They all have a cost.’ ‘The first thing for management to know is that growth is not something that is desirable. It is a necessity; ’ Perhaps these quotations should be written up in large letters and placed on the wall facing all information and library service managers. In them lie comments on the radical change and philosophy which will affect our daily work. Many readers of this review will work in the public sector. Drucker has some valuable points to make. The first job of the executive is to make his organisation perform. Results are always on the outside. There are only costs on the inside . . the executive thus lives in a constant struggle to keep performance from being overtaken by the concerns of the inside, that is by bureaucracy . . . in the public service institution where the market test is absent . . . bureaucratic constraints threaten to swallow up performance. . . . In another article on managing non-profit institutions he discusses their growing importance, describing them as the third sector. They will be becoming increasingly difficult to handle because they have grown so large, and now require more and better management of a different kind. The business person is concerned with being efficient, the civil servant with drawing up the right procedures and controls. For the public sector there is a need to define what the task of the organization should and should not be. Many information and library professionals in the public sector will echo his thoughts. Some advice from another essay may give some pointers. Drucker draws attention to the approach of developing innovative strategies through the systematic and purposeful abandonment of the old, the outworn and the obsolete. . . . The first question is not ‘what are the new things we are going to do?’ but rather ‘what are the old things we are going to abandon?’ In the public sector this is a difficult question to address, since the purpose of the public organization is precisely to provide some form of service to people. In the industrial sector if you are not able to market the product the organization changes the product or goes out of business. It is the product which forces change. The public sector lacks such a feedback mechanism, and in the memory of most of its managers has only known growth. Cutting or radically changing services in the public sector will generally produce a conflict of institutional goals which entangles with the inherent political forces that
264
Book reviews
surround the organization. In other articles the theme of abandonment in the public sector returns again ‘the toughest most novel but also most important prerequisite of organisational effort is organised abandonment’, ‘Government agencies should therefore be required to abandon one programme or one activity before a new one can be started’. His views on the performance of management can be applied in the information and library sector. He considers that it can be measured in respect of its business planning. The questions he would pose are: what are the results compared with the expectations ?; did the things predicted in the plan happen, and were they the truly important things?; were the goals set the right goals, in the light of actual development, both within the business, in the market, economy and society, and have they been attained? Planning . . . it not an attempt to predict the future, let alone an attempt to control it. It is an attempt to make today’s decisions in contemplation of the futurity. Drucker has much to say to managers in any organizational setting. His direct, self-confident style conveys ideas of fundamental value. In our field he can do much to stimulate managerial thinking and action. A copy to hand in any manager’s office will repay the investment. One final quote which is irresistible, and disconcerting. Discussing the class of ‘68-. . . ‘their main complaint is not that the boss is an old fogey, reactionary or stupid, but that he doesn’t practice the management he preaches . . . ‘. P. Layzell Ward Department of Library and Information Studies Western Australian Institute of Technology
J. H. Ashford and D. I. Matkin. Studies in the application office text package systems. London: 1982. (Case studies in library automation) 50 pp. ISBN (54.60 to Members).
Library 0 85365
Association, 535 9. f5.75
This is a brief survey of the current and planned use of the STATUS free-text software package in special libraries, information services, and databanks, with some additional notes on the use of related packages, such as STAIRS. The STATUS package is typically mounted on computers such as the PRIME 300/400/550, the ICL 2904/2950/2960, DEC VAX, IBM 370 series and similar mini- and mainframe equipment. The cost of the package is not stated but is believed to be of the order of f 10 000. The first brief chapter lists processes and services in libraries suitable for the application of computers and notes the principal relevant characteristics of academic, national, public and special libraries; the information is most usefully summarized in two tables, one of these providing typical numbers for titles, volumes, borrowers, and issues, the other listing comments on the problems of using computers in these four types of libraries in seven application areas. These applications are then concisely surveyed in relation to the scope for free-text systems in the second chapter, the specific areas being
Book reviews
arranged by subject headings-general bibliographies and reference works, constitutional documents, law codes, other general legislative documents, general party documents, general statistics, other general sources of documentation, international relations, political and ideological affairs, military affairs, economic affairs, social affairs, cultural affairs, and leaders’ works. Individual entries follow standard bibliographical format and appear in the original language; Cyrillic entries are transliterated according to the Library of Congress system. An English translation of each title is also given. If a published translation in English, or failing this in French or German, exists, it is noted. The vast majority of items were inspected by the contributors and are briefly annotated. Those not seen are thus marked, and that they represent such a small proportion of the whole is indicative of the zeal of both the compilers and the organizations through which the material was obtained. The layout of each section is clear, with various typefaces used to distinguish headings and entries, thus facilitating easy use. The USSR section, which includes all union republics, accounts for more than half of the bibliography with its 1560 entries, reflecting the degree of interest generated in the West. The section covering Albania contains 83 items, Bulgaria 101, Czechoslovakia 110, GDR 156, Hungary 244, Yugoslavia 138, Poland 177, Romania 266 and the final section devoted to international and multinational publications 41 entries. There is a full list of abbreviations used and the index covers all titles, authors, editors and compilers of works cited in main entries and annotations. It is the first such bibliography, and certainly the most extensive, to cover this area and should prove invaluable to researchers, librarians and others with a particular interest in this field. The concise introductions to each chapter are a useful means of refreshing one’s memory of key background events and place the works listed into context. The additional information on translations and other bibliographies and works indirectly linked to the item concerned is again invaluable. Inevitably it will be difficult and time-consuming for researchers to gain access to many of the works listed here, but it is nevertheless reassuring to know that such a bibliography, drawing together as it does a wealth of information on material notoriously hard to track down, does now exist. D. E. Kemsley School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London
Peter F. Drucker. The changing world of the executive. London, 0 434 90406 6. 210.95.
Heineman,
1982.
27 1 pp. ISBN
Peter Drucker is probably the most widely read writer on management today. There will be few managers of information and library services who will not have at least one of his titles, probably in paperback, sitting well-thumbed on their own bookshelves at home. The practice of management, Managing for results and The age of discontinuity are titles which to date have had the greatest relevance to our daily work. His ideas are positive, perceptive and relate to managing today. The last point is important, for in the 1980s we cannot concentrate totally on building the brave new world of tomorrow without relating it closely to the world of today. If we do, it could be at the cost of not
Book
reviews
263
existing tomorrow. So today’s manager is facing major problems of resource allocation and making decisions involving cutbacks in expenditure whilst, at the same time, planning ahead for the future. And this against a background of profound technological change. Never has a time held so many opportunities and challenges. But the question is, “how do you remain positive and also convince those you work for, and those who work with you, that there are challenges and a bright future ahead?’ Drucker’s latest publication is a collection of articles which are most rewarding when dipped into when needing inspiration. He even has some points to make about matters particularly pertinent to the information game. ‘The critical problem will be not how to get or how to process information but rather to define what information really is. ’ ‘The third industrial revolution will be knowledge based. ’ ‘All of us should have learned in the last ten years that there are no free resources. They all have a cost.’ ‘The first thing for management to know is that growth is not something that is desirable. It is a necessity; ’ Perhaps these quotations should be written up in large letters and placed on the wall facing all information and library service managers. In them lie comments on the radical change and philosophy which will affect our daily work. Many readers of this review will work in the public sector. Drucker has some valuable points to make. The first job of the executive is to make his organisation perform. Results are always on the outside. There are only costs on the inside . . the executive thus lives in a constant struggle to keep performance from being overtaken by the concerns of the inside, that is by bureaucracy . . . in the public service institution where the market test is absent . . . bureaucratic constraints threaten to swallow up performance. . . . In another article on managing non-profit institutions he discusses their growing importance, describing them as the third sector. They will be becoming increasingly difficult to handle because they have grown so large, and now require more and better management of a different kind. The business person is concerned with being efficient, the civil servant with drawing up the right procedures and controls. For the public sector there is a need to define what the task of the organization should and should not be. Many information and library professionals in the public sector will echo his thoughts. Some advice from another essay may give some pointers. Drucker draws attention to the approach of developing innovative strategies through the systematic and purposeful abandonment of the old, the outworn and the obsolete. . . . The first question is not ‘what are the new things we are going to do?’ but rather ‘what are the old things we are going to abandon?’ In the public sector this is a difficult question to address, since the purpose of the public organization is precisely to provide some form of service to people. In the industrial sector if you are not able to market the product the organization changes the product or goes out of business. It is the product which forces change. The public sector lacks such a feedback mechanism, and in the memory of most of its managers has only known growth. Cutting or radically changing services in the public sector will generally produce a conflict of institutional goals which entangles with the inherent political forces that
264
Book reviews
surround the organization. In other articles the theme of abandonment in the public sector returns again ‘the toughest most novel but also most important prerequisite of organisational effort is organised abandonment’, ‘Government agencies should therefore be required to abandon one programme or one activity before a new one can be started’. His views on the performance of management can be applied in the information and library sector. He considers that it can be measured in respect of its business planning. The questions he would pose are: what are the results compared with the expectations ?; did the things predicted in the plan happen, and were they the truly important things?; were the goals set the right goals, in the light of actual development, both within the business, in the market, economy and society, and have they been attained? Planning . . . it not an attempt to predict the future, let alone an attempt to control it. It is an attempt to make today’s decisions in contemplation of the futurity. Drucker has much to say to managers in any organizational setting. His direct, self-confident style conveys ideas of fundamental value. In our field he can do much to stimulate managerial thinking and action. A copy to hand in any manager’s office will repay the investment. One final quote which is irresistible, and disconcerting. Discussing the class of ‘68-. . . ‘their main complaint is not that the boss is an old fogey, reactionary or stupid, but that he doesn’t practice the management he preaches . . . ‘. P. Layzell Ward Department of Library and Information Studies Western Australian Institute of Technology
J. H. Ashford and D. I. Matkin. Studies in the application office text package systems. London: 1982. (Case studies in library automation) 50 pp. ISBN (54.60 to Members).
Library 0 85365
Association, 535 9. f5.75
This is a brief survey of the current and planned use of the STATUS free-text software package in special libraries, information services, and databanks, with some additional notes on the use of related packages, such as STAIRS. The STATUS package is typically mounted on computers such as the PRIME 300/400/550, the ICL 2904/2950/2960, DEC VAX, IBM 370 series and similar mini- and mainframe equipment. The cost of the package is not stated but is believed to be of the order of f 10 000. The first brief chapter lists processes and services in libraries suitable for the application of computers and notes the principal relevant characteristics of academic, national, public and special libraries; the information is most usefully summarized in two tables, one of these providing typical numbers for titles, volumes, borrowers, and issues, the other listing comments on the problems of using computers in these four types of libraries in seven application areas. These applications are then concisely surveyed in relation to the scope for free-text systems in the second chapter, the specific areas being