Organizational structure in university libraries: how to change?

Abstract

University libraries have a lot of specialized activities in their internal services and user services and should find an organizational structure that better answers to user needs. Libraries must be aware that there is a need for permanent update according to the transformations that occur inside and outside the organization. In order to obtain information about the Portuguese reality a questionnaire was developed and sent to the major libraries of public and private universities, focusing on their staff, collection, budget and their actual organizational structure. For libraries with changes in their organizational structures, some reasons were pointed out in the questionnaire to find out what kind of situation leads to change. In other countries some changes in university libraries occurred to improve the organizational structure. Although the differences among countries and libraries, it is possible to learn something from the experiences of other institutions. It is our aim to reach some basic guidelines that might be useful for Portuguese university libraries to improve their organizational structure in a near future that all the academic community will benefit.