The Business of Running a Library: A Handbook for Public Library Directors

By Paul John Cirino

This is a practical, day-to-day management handbook for the modern American public library. Marketing your institution, your services, your reason for being? Handling a grievance? Dealing with elected officials? Designing a new building? Automating? Read up in Cirino.The subject of leadership is covered in depth, rightly. This book might help you learn how to avoid becoming a bureaucrat and become, instead, a leader. It might help empower you to function as an entrepreneur, unleashing creativity and change.Also included are looks at the nuances of managing a modern day library. Topics such as flexible working schedules, drug testing, latchkey children, collective bargaining, recruitment and training, and performance evaluations are fully covered.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0899506488
• ISBN13: 9780899506487
• Release Date: November 1991
• Publisher: McFarland Publishing
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A Valuable Resource

Cirino proves to be an enthusiastic and sophisticated advocate of the library profession. From the management aspect, his recommendations are experienced and current. Aware that the running of a public library is a business, the author has written a valuable handbook for public library directors and students of library schools. In the chapter on recruitment and training, which I enjoyed and appreciated, Cirino addresses the issue of inadequate pay and working conditions. The amount of devoted advocates of public library service suggests the increase of prestige, pay, and improved working conditions over time. Sufficient time and effort must be spent training the high-quality people that libraries must attract. Advancement of the staff's exposure, experiences, education, and the encouragement of growth and change will help set a higher standard for people, libraries, and our profession.Sandy Updegraff, L550 School of Library and Information Science; Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis