3 - The people side of change: Applying change management principles in academic libraries

Abstract

The chapter gives an overview of change management theory and describes two major documents and processes – the change impact analysis and the stakeholder assessment. It discusses how these can be applied within an academic library context, demonstrated through context-specific scenarios. It argues that academic libraries would benefit from engaging change management practices to implement changes more effectively. This could be supported by library staff gaining qualifications in change management themselves, engaging external change managers for significant initiatives or utilising change managers employed within their institutions in other business units such as IT. Although there is a cost implication for all these approaches, the literature demonstrates that there is a measurable increase in the uptake of new systems when formal change management is used.