Library Management Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Zero-base budgeting was developed by Peter A. Pyhrr.

Pyhrr devised it at Texas Instruments around 1969 and described it in the Harvard Business Review in 1970. In zero-base budgeting every activity has to be justified afresh each budget period, from zero, instead of the previous year's allocation being taken as the base and adjusted. It later spread to government and to libraries as a way of questioning continuing expenditure.

F.W. Taylor is the founder of scientific management and Henry Fayol of administrative management theory; neither devised a budgeting system. R.D. Stuart is not credited with the technique in the management literature, which attributes it to Pyhrr alone.

Answer: B

Quality as fitness for use is the definition of Joseph M. Juran.

Juran, one of the founders of quality management, defined quality from the user's side: a product or service is of good quality when it is fit for the use the customer intends. His quality trilogy of planning, control and improvement built on that definition.

Philip Crosby defined quality differently, as conformance to requirements, and is known for 'zero defects'. Peter Drucker wrote on management in general, and Michael Maccoby on leadership and management character types. Neither framed quality as fitness for use.

Answer: D

Drury enunciated the principle in 1930.

Francis K.W. Drury's book Book Selection, published by the American Library Association in 1930, stated the principle that governs choosing reading material: to provide the right book for the right reader at the right time. It became one of the standard laws of book selection, alongside the ideas of Dewey, McColvin and Ranganathan.

The other years are wrong because they do not match the publication of Book Selection. Lionel McColvin's Theory of Book Selection for Public Libraries appeared in 1925, which is the nearby date most often confused with Drury's.

Answer: A

The father of modern management, in the paper's sense, is Henry Fayol.

Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer, published Administration industrielle et generale in 1916. He set out the functions of management (planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling) and fourteen principles of management that apply to any organisation, which is why he is called the father of modern management or of administrative management theory.

F.W. Taylor is the father of scientific management, the trap in this question; his work was on efficiency at shop-floor level. Henry Gantt devised the Gantt chart, and Frederick Herzberg the two-factor theory of motivation.

Answer: C

Theory Y is about people being self-directed and self-controlled at the work place.

Douglas McGregor's The Human Side of Enterprise (1960) contrasted two sets of assumptions managers make about workers. Theory Y assumes that work is as natural as play, that people will exercise self-direction and self-control towards objectives they are committed to, seek responsibility and show creativity when given the chance.

Disliking work, lacking creativity and being self-centred are the pessimistic assumptions of Theory X, which holds that people avoid work and must be directed and controlled. So the other three options describe Theory X, not Theory Y.

Answer: B

The blank is filled by Management Information System.

An MIS collects, processes and reports data on an organisation's operations so that managers at each level get timely, relevant information for planning, controlling and decision-making. Improving decisions through better information is the definition of an MIS.

System analysis is the study of an existing system in order to design a new one, a step in building an MIS rather than the thing that supplies information. Operation management is the management of production processes, and controlling techniques, such as budgets and audits, use information but do not provide it.

Answer: A

The answer is (A) is true but (B) is false.

Stock verification checks the library's holdings against its accession records to find missing, damaged and misplaced items. In an academic library that information feeds collection development directly: it shows what needs replacing, weeding or adding, so statement (A) is true.

Statement (B) is false. Verification means checking every item on the shelves and in circulation against the register, often with the library partly closed, and it is notorious as one of the most time-consuming routines in a library. That is why sample verification and RFID-based methods are recommended. Options calling (B) true, or (A) false, are therefore wrong.

Answer: B

The answer is E. Mayo.

Elton Mayo's Hawthorne studies at Western Electric (1927-1932) showed that output depends on workers' attitudes, group norms and the attention paid to them, not only on physical conditions and pay. This founded the human relations school, which treats the psychology of the people in an organisation as the key to management.

Taylor (scientific management) treated workers through time study and incentive pay, and Fayol set out the functions and principles of administration; both belong to the classical school. Douglas McGregor (written M. Gregor here) built on the human relations approach with his Theory X and Theory Y, but the theory as a school starts with Mayo.

Answer: B

PERT is used for time management.

The Program Evaluation and Review Technique, developed in 1958 for the US Navy's Polaris missile project, plans a project as a network of activities and events. Each activity gets optimistic, most likely and pessimistic time estimates, giving an expected time:

\[ t_e = \frac{t_o + 4t_m + t_p}{6} \]

The longest path through the network, the critical path, shows the shortest time the project can take and which activities cannot slip. It is a scheduling tool, not a method for managing money, space or self-appraisal, though libraries use it to plan projects such as automation or a move.

Answer: A

The scientific management period is 1880-1927.

F.W. Taylor began his time and work studies at Midvale Steel around 1880, and his Principles of Scientific Management appeared in 1911. The period is usually taken to run to 1927, when the Hawthorne studies began and the human relations school started to take over.

1927-1950 is therefore the human relations period, and the 1950s onwards belong to the behavioural, systems and later approaches to management, so the other ranges are wrong.