Making decisions on academic library opening hours is complex with many pressures on managers. This research surveys senior academic library managers from the UK, using a questionnaire to reveal views on library opening hours, the decision making process, and the pressures which influenced their decisions. A variety of factors were found, in particular satisfying undergraduate demands. The research also revealed the sources of information important in making decisions on opening hours and the influence of ‘political’ issues in the decision making process. Some institutions remove complexity by utilising 24/7 opening, though this is not an option for many.
History
School
Business and Economics
Department
Business
Published in
Journal of Librarianship & Information Science
Citation
RAVENWOOD, C., WALTON, G. and STEPHENS, D., 2017. Complexity in decision making: Determining university library opening hours. Journal of Librarianship & Information Science, 51 (2), pp.488-496.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acceptance date
2017-06-23
Publication date
2017
Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Journal of Librarianship & Information Science and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000617726127