Figure 1 SWOT analysis diagram
After knowing the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and treats, stakeholders can use the existing business strength to exploit opportunities, to create new opportunities, to counteract threats and repair the weaknesses (Robson, 1997). Academic libraries should preserve the reliability of resources in order to support academic study and research. Libraries have to emphasise that they have much longer history than any online knowledge service organisations as well. They also have to deal with the low efficiency in some service with Information Systems, for example, book borrowing. If libraries want to fulfil the increased need of knowledge from people, they also have to work on how to compete with electronic resource providers. Finally, they should always prepare for strategy change because library is no longer a stable business nowadays.
2.1.2 Internal environment analysis (PEST)
Political (PEST-P)
British Culture Secretary Chris Smith proposed new standards for country’s public libraries (Schmidt and Stephens, 2000). This new standards has implemented in 2004. The proposals issued some political restraints to libraries are as follows:
- Open hours (PEST-P.1)
- Annual input of books (PEST-P.2)
- Provide internet access (PEST-P.3)
Economic (PEST-E)
Libraries charge users by authorising access to referencing and borrowing facilities (BBC News, 06/01/2003) and providing the use of wide range of resources (books, electronic journals, database, etc.) to public (companies, individuals, institutes, etc.). They are supported by publishers and government funds. For example, Oxford University Library receives free books supply from publishers annually.
Maintenance of library facilities which includes books, journals, digital resources, equipment, etc.
Employment cost
Resources input
- Decline in library visits (PEST-E.3)
BBC News (28/08/2007) said that there has been a 22% long-term decline in student library visits, show statistics from the Society of College, National and University Libraries. See also SWOT-T.2.
- Increase in the number of book loans (PEST-E.4)
Also in BBC News (28/08/2007), they said that despite the reduction in trips to libraries - the figures also show that there has been a long-term increase in the number of book loans, up by 11% in the past 10 years.
Socio-cultural (PEST-S)
- Libraries are judged by the amount and quality of books (PEST-S.1)
- Decreasing people think library is unique place to study and research. (PEST-S.2)
- Some researchers said that the more important use of library is to build up real academic relationship. (PEST-S.3)
- Library is a kind of regional business (PEST-S.4)
A library suffers less competition from other library, but high competition from counterparts such as online book reference services, e-journals providers, etc.
Increasing number of people choose to study or research at workplace or home rather than libraries because they do not want to waste time on travel.
- Growth of cyber-library (PEST-S.6)
Technological (PEST-T)
A open technology. See also SWOT-O.1.
- Digital resources (PEST-T.2)
Academic libraries also can manage a great amount multimedia resource such as electronic books, videos, audios, etc. But they have to be reliable. Libraries have to meet the challenge of management of digital resources.
- Distributed cyber-library (PEST-T.3)
- The concept of Web 2.0 (PEST-T.4)
Concept of Web 2.0 changes the form of information management from publishing to participation. The style of communication on the Internet has changed to be decentralised and personalisation has been widely supported.
- Automatic equipment (PEST-T.5)
One trend of technological change is to develop automatic machines to take place of artificial services such as automatic voucher machine for easy check out, etc. See also SWOT-O.1.
Conclusion
After PEST analysis, some change in the policy, economy, culture and technology has been captured in order to derive further requirements. When libraries have to guarantees stable input of books due to the policy, they have to look for new methods for making revenue, for example, libraries can provide knowledge to companies and charge service fee. Another way is to reduce the cost, for example use Information Technology to reduce the cost of maintenance of resources. Due to PEST-S.4, university libraries can make wide collaboration with each other to provide some creative services because they are regional business, which have fixed group of users. In order to follow the change of users’ habit, a system which can make them feel convenient to work in anywhere, for example a cyber library. This will be supported by many technologies such as the Internet, multimedia technology, distributed processing, the concept of Web 2.0 and hardware.
2.2 Analysis of core competencies (Boston Matrix)
Wild Cat - High market growth but low market share (BM-WC)
- Personal library (BM-WC.1)
After personal bank’s appearing, current people find that they need personalisation in library business because they need a new way to manage their information in libraries. This concept would like people to manage the user and relevant information by themselves rather than by libraries. They can share information and work together, furthermore, they might create accademic communities based on libraries.
- Knowledge management support (BM-WC.2)
Knowledge management (KM) can be defined the processes by which an organisation formally creates, gathers, organises, analyses, shares and applies its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, experience and people skills. (Lucey, 2005) Because they have plenty of academic research which can be provided to business, academic libraries can have this kind of service to support the knowledge management.
Star - High market growth and market share (BM-S)
- Cyber-library (BM-S.1)
- Introduction of digital and multimedia resources (BM-S.2)
- Distance education (BM-S.3)
Cash Cow - Low market growth but high market share (BM-CC)
- Book borrowing (BM-CC.1)
- Research & study support (BM-S.1)
Dog - Low market growth and market share (BM-D)
- Printing and copying (BM-CC.2)
Conclusion
The Boston Matrix Box is made as follow:
High
Medium
Low
High Medium Low
Figure 2 Boston Matrix Box
Boston Matrix shows a product life cycle. In general terms, a business opportunity will start out as a 'Question Mark (Wild Cats)' segment. The opportunity will then move clockwise around the matrix through 'Star', and ultimately to 'Cash Cow' segment by which time the host company should be dominant and seeing a significant return for its efforts. The host company may ultimately loose market share as new competitors enter the market with lower cost (or better) alternatives, in which case the Product / Market opportunity relegates to a 'Dog' status. (Market Modelling Limited)
According to this, expanding market share of personal library and knowledge management service which can be implemented by Information Technology should be paid more efforts. But investments should be made cautiously in this segment since the risks associated with this segment are higher than with others (Robson, 1997). Cyber-library and distance education are expected to continue to do so in the future as well as the introduction of digital resources to library. Borrowing service and research & study support service should be considered as need-to-change products as they are not expected to provide significant revenues. New technology such as IS should be highly introduced into the services in this segment. If it is not necessary, printing and copy service can be removed.
3. Descriptions of stakeholders and their roles in the organisation
In this section, the essay will analyse the stakeholders whom the business will involve. Firstly, stakeholders will be identified. Then, the essay will describe their roles in the academic library. Finally, some requirements will be derived from this analysis.
3.1 Identifying stakeholders
Stakeholder is people who can affect the company’s actions. Section 3.1 will identify as many stakeholders and group them in two classifications, ‘Insiders’ and ‘Outsiders’ (Scholes and Klemm, 1987). In each group, stakeholders will be ordered by the grade of collaboration. Although this method is old, people also can capture some requirements from it. The list is as follows:
Insiders:
- Investors/owners: the university
- Managers: the university library manager(s)
- Employees: librarians, other library staff (e.g. assistants, desk officers etc.)
Outsiders:
- Suppliers: publishers, authors, other universities
- Customers/Clients: students, university staff, the public, companies
- Legislators: the government, the university
- Competitors: e-resource providers, computer centres, online bookstores
3.2 The roles of stakeholders
Due to the decline in library visits (See PEST-E.3) and the increase in the number of book loans (See PEST-E.4), libraries might start to change their role. BBC News said that the university library organisation interprets this as a reflection of a changing role for libraries - which it calls "clicks and mortar" - in which they provide an online service as well as a place where students come to work.
Because of this change, the roles of stakeholders should be describe in order to detect the role change, or at least to know the relationship and their satisfaction.
Every stakeholder plays a role in the organisation. Following section will describe the roles.
3.2.1 Inside stakeholders:
-
The university is the owner of the academic library, which highly concerns the aim-level performance of the library.
- The library manager(s) concern(s) the specific objectives that the library should achieve.
- Librarians concern operational management of the library. After a system is developed, librarians’ job could be much easier, which might just include deal with the urgencies and enquiries.
- Other library staff might just concern how their jobs can be easily done. Maintenance might be much easier as well when digital resources are widely introduced into the library. They even might lose their jobs.
It is very important to assign responsibilities for inside stakeholders to know each other’s responsibility. Responsibility Assignment Matrix is used for assigning responsibilities as follows:
Table 1. Responsibility Assignment Matrix
(Participant, Accountable, Review required, Input required, Sign-off required)
3.2.2 Outside stakeholders
- Publisher is the main supplier to the library. They concern the amount of their books on the shelves in the library. If providing books is not a free service, they also concern the amount of books that the library can buy from them.
- Authors are potential suppliers for future. Libraries might be the bridge between authors and library users. Users can have opportunities to communicate with authors directly. Academic relationship can partly build up in this way. Thus, authors are knowledge supplier, who can make revenue for libraries in the future if appropriate chance comes.
- Other universities are collaborators. They can cooperate more widely in the future.
- Students and university staff is the main customer of academic libraries. A survey in Razzano’s (1985) work shows the main purpose of using libraries for library users. Approximately 54 percent people wanted ‘to borrow book or library materials’ while approximately 26 percent people wanted ‘to complete homework or conduct research or obtain information’. If users are teenagers, there were about 4 percent of them saying they want ‘to see friends’.
- The public is the user of the library who can make a little revenue for the library.
- Companies are potential a large number of revenue makers. Libraries can charge them by providing some knowledge services.
- The government is an external stakeholder that sometimes affects the libraries much by new policies.
- E-resource providers, computer centres, online bookstores etc. are competitors against libraries. Not all of their services are threat against libraries, but because of new technologies, libraries are suffering from the impact from them.
3.3 Requirements derived from change of roles
Because library are changing its role into ‘clicks and mortar’, a number of changes can be found in stakeholders’ roles. Requirements then can be derived from the change. For example, librarians might change their role to library system operators and consultants. This means that librarians have to take skill training about IT. More requirements derived from changes are as follows:
- Librarians have to take skill training.
- Academic libraries should collaborate with each other to create new services.
- Academic libraries may provide an online system to the public users for saving their time.
- Academic libraries should analyse their competitors as soon as possible. Finding their weaknesses might be useful.
- Academic libraries may reorganise their resources in libraries in order to meet new requirements from users.
- Academic libraries should keep in touch with publishers and authors for current and future cooperation.
4. Modelling business processes in Activity Diagrams
According to the strategic analysis and stakeholder analysis, academic libraries should improve some of their service by Information Systems. They are:
- Book borrowing (See the conclusion of SWOT analysis)
- Maintenance and management of resources (See the conclusion of PEST analysis)
- Personal library and knowledge management (See the conclusion of Boston Matrix analysis)
Additionally, there are some units which can be implemented into the system as well. But they have low priorities in this scenario. They are:
- Library Market Research (Mogan, 1998)
- Instant Message Service
- Mobile Library Service (Tung, et al, 2007)
In the business modelling, UML activity diagrams can be used for describing business processes. This section takes borrowing and returning service for example to articulate the business process. The following Activity Diagram are describing the main process of borrowing and returning book in a library.
Figure 3. Library Business Process (the main process)
Description:
The process starts from user’s SwimLane. Users have to search books they want. If the books available, they can find the books on the shelf directly, otherwise, if they like to, they can reserve the books. After finding the books, users can wait for librarian’s recording. For returning books, users directly wait in queue for available librarians. Then, if a librarian is ready for the user, they ask the user if he/she borrow books or return books. If borrowing, the librarian will verify the user and record verified borrowing and then get ready for next customer. But if the user dose not pass the verification, the librarian do nothing but deal with next customer’s borrowing or returning. If the user is coming to return books, librarian will check the overdue and record returning. If the book is overdue, then the librarian will issue fine from the user. Meanwhile, the books are placed on the shelves. After these, the librarian is ready for the next user when the user leaves, which mean one borrowing or returning transaction is end. The first synchronised bar should be emphasised because it might be wrongly understood at a glance. This one does not mean that borrowing and returning happens synchronously, but means user’s action is synchronised with librarian’s. But during this time, user might do nothing, so no user’s transactions are showed in this synchronised bar.
5. Design of business functions in Use Case Diagrams
After the business processes analysis, use case can be derived from the processes. Use Case Diagram requires system perspective which means all use cases can be implemented in systems as functions or models of systems. The following Use Case Diagram in UML illustrates the use cases in Borrowing and Returning System, which derived from the Activity Diagram in the previous section.
Figure 4. Book Borrowing System Use Case
Description:
This section describes seven use cases which directly connect with stakeholders, because these use cases are the interfaces provided to system users. Others (Check user status and update information) are automatically processed by the system.
Verify user:
Check overdue:
Issue fine:
Record returning:
Record borrowing:
Search item:
Reserve item:
6. Managing changes to be sustainable
According to the strategic analysis and stakeholder analysis, many changes have been found. This section will try to find some approaches by which libraries can manage changes to be sustainable.
Firstly, the changes are listed as follows:
Cultural and environmental changes:
- Users’ continuously increasing need of knowledge acquisition
- Annual decline in library visit but increase in the number of book loans
- Changes in policies
Technological changes:
- New concept of World Wide Web
- The requirement of information systems
- The requirement of new advanced facilities in libraries
Stakeholder Role changes:
- Library’ role changes to ‘clicks and mortar’.
- Librarians might change their role from operators to library system operators and consultants.
- Other library staff might suffer from unemployment.
- Universities might collaborate with each other for create some services.
- Library users might be no longer willing to visit libraries if they can borrow book online unless library provides a stimulating, adaptable environment that facilitates the creative work.
- The impact from competitors will be greater in the future.
Financial changes:
- Libraries start to be positive to make revenue.
- Companies will be considered as a potential service buyer.
Then, the changes can be reclassified by types as the following diagram shows:
Figure 5. Types of organisational change
Changes can be much easier to manage by using this approach. The changes in the lower two box would be considered firstly as they show the reactions that libraries should act immediately, meanwhile, the changes in Turing and Re-orientation box should be regularly examined for capture opportunities to carry out training and development.
7. Conclusion and future improvements
University libraries are facing a challenge. Current online book reference service and similar services are seriously considered to replace libraries unless libraries take the challenge and power strategies against impact. Thus, change is needed, which involves internal and external environment, the role of library and stakeholders, technology, etc. Libraries have to adapt themselves to the new environment and make good use of resources, technologies, strengths, etc. and overcome the weaknesses. Though the business strategy and stakeholder analysis, the change can be clarified and strategies can be abstracted from the change. Furthermore, if information systems are needed, requirements can be derived from the strategy and then make sense practically.
In the future, there is no doubt that Information Systems will be a mighty tool for improving libraries. There are still unlimited undeveloped system functions waiting for discovery by far. With the support of Information Systems, a blueprint of a future library can be drawn. Libraries will be the centre of academic communities whose members can communicate with each other freely, creatively and efficiently with the support of libraries not only online but also offline. This academy based communication will be the new style of study and life. Under this concept and according to the analysis done by this paper, the following picture of future library is drawn as the end of the paper.
Figure 6. Future library
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