INTRODUCTION The phenomenal changes seen in library operations in the past five years have led to a review of traditional library organisation and management patterns in many libraries. All kinds of organizations are trying to help employees understand and keep up with organisational change (www.niscair.res.in). Institutes and workshops promise to help employees assess the current culture of the organization, determine needed changes, and then to prepare for the changing environment. The importance of organisational culture has increased in our society, characterized by its global perspective and technological bent. Hence, the traditional libraries and their managers are under tremendous organisational pressure and are facing the probable threat of extinction. Librarians today need to work like their counterparts in the business world. They should rethink how to manage and organise the library operations and activities to reengineer their processes in the new environment (Moren, 2001). Libraries have been at the forefront of developments in automating their processes, from the development of the first computer-based circulation systems and catalogues. The new information technologies (IT) and new knowledge transfer processes based upon those technologies now offer libraries the opportunity to review their processes and indeed (Al-Mashari & Zairi, 1999), require them to do so, Janson's (1996) analysis of the starting points for BPR is of interest in the context of libraries: * Make the customer the starting point for change-by identifying customer wants and creating the infrastructure to support these expectations; * Design work processes in light of organisational goals; * Restructure to support front-line performance. Following the publication of the fundamental concepts of BPR by Hammer (1990) and Davenport and Short (1990), many organisations have reported dramatic benefits gained from the successful implementation of BPR (Talwar, 1994). Hammer and Champy (1993) estimate that as many as 70 percent do not achieve the dramatic results they seek. BPR has great potential for increasing productivity through reduced process time and cost, improved quality and greater customer satisfaction, but it often requires a fundamental organisational change. As a result, the implementation process is complex, and needs to be checked against several success/failure factors to ensure successful implementation, as well as to avoid implementation pitfalls. This article deals with BPR and the scenario of National Science Library (NSL) before and after implementation of it. DEFINITIONS OF BPR Some of the definitions of BPR are as follows: * BPR is the logical organization of people, materials, energy, equipment and procedures into work activities designed to produce a specified and result--Davenport and Short (1990). * Hammer and Champy defines BPR as the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed. * Talwar comments: ... [BPR] requires us to build and communicate a shared understanding of the organization's preferred future, create an environment and infrastructure that actively promotes learning and allows imagination, not conditioning, to guide our decisions. * BPR consists of rethinking and transforming organisational processes through the use of information technologies to achieve major improvements in quality, performance and productivity. BPR is also known as BP management, BP improvement or Core process redesign. BPR SUCCESS FACTORS Properly designed processes (e.g. that is how work is carried out) are vitally important to the success of any organisation. Periodically, all organisations do need to examine both the need for and the design of their processes. …