Library Management Questions and Answers

Answer: B

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

The product (in libraries, the service) is at the heart of marketing: price, place and promotion all depend on having something users need.

Marketing myopia, Theodore Levitt's term (1960), is the error of focusing narrowly on the product instead of on customers' needs. It is a fault to avoid, not a 'need of the day', so the reason is false.

Answer: A

The father of scientific management is Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915).

Taylor, an American engineer, used time and motion studies to find the one best way to do each task, and set out his approach in The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).

Henri Fayol is the father of modern (administrative) management theory and its fourteen principles. Chester Barnard wrote The Functions of the Executive and saw the organisation as a social system. Robert Owen was an early factory reformer known for his concern with workers' welfare, before any of them.

Answer: C

The fusion process theory was proposed by Bakke and Argyris.

E. Wight Bakke and Chris Argyris described how an organisation tries to shape the individual to serve its goals while the individual tries to use the organisation for personal goals. The two processes fuse, and motivation and integration come from that fusion.

Herzberg proposed the two-factor (motivation-hygiene) theory, Maslow the hierarchy of needs, and Douglas McGregor Theory X and Theory Y, so none of them is the author of the fusion process theory.

Answer: A

The internal cause among the options is Leather.

Internal (inherent) causes of deterioration lie in the materials a document is made of: acidic paper, unstable inks and adhesives, and leather bindings that decay into red rot. Leather is such a material, so its own chemistry makes the item deteriorate.

Dust, biological agents (insects, fungi, rodents) and natural calamities such as floods and fire all act on the material from outside, so they are external causes.

Answer: A

The answer is (i) and (iii) are correct: technological change and government policies.

External changes come from the library's environment and are beyond its own control. New technology and changes in government policy, law and funding force a library to change how it works.

User complaints and the library's own policy arise within the library and its service relationship, so they are internal matters it can address itself. Every option containing (ii) or (iv) is wrong.

Answer: D

The correct match is a-iv, b-iii, c-ii, d-i.

F. W. Taylor founded the scientific approach to management (a-iv). Henri Fayol listed esprit de corps, team spirit, among his fourteen principles (b-iii). Chester Barnard treated the organisation as a co-operative social system (c-ii). Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick coined POSDCORB: planning, organising, staffing, directing, co-ordinating, reporting and budgeting (d-i).

Option A pairs Taylor with POSDCORB and Gulick with scientific management, and B and C misplace Fayol, so only D matches all four.

Answer: C

The order is (i) (ii) (iv) (iii).

A product passes through four stages. In the introduction stage, which the paper calls the advertising product phase, it is launched and promoted. In growth sales rise quickly. At maturity sales level off as the market is saturated. In decline sales fall and the product is withdrawn or renewed.

Option A puts decline before maturity, B reverses the whole cycle, and D starts with growth and ends with the launch, so only C is in sequence.

Answer: D

Both (A) and (R) are true.

Libraries that do not adapt to new formats, technologies and user needs lose their users, so they must change to survive. Ranganathan's fifth law of library science, the library is a growing organism, makes the same point: a library keeps growing and changing in its collection, staff, readers and methods, as a living organism does.

Since both statements hold, the options calling either one false are wrong.

Answer: A

The answer is (i) and (ii) are correct.

Taylor's principles are usually listed as science, not rule of thumb; harmony, not discord; co-operation, not individualism; maximum output in place of restricted output; and development of each worker to the greatest efficiency. Statement (i) is one of them word for word, and the key reads (ii) as his 'co-operation, not individualism', the individual's interest giving way to the common one (the exact phrase is one of Fayol's fourteen principles).

Unity of command (iv) is Fayol's principle and contradicts Taylor's functional foremanship, where one worker takes orders from several specialist foremen, so options with (iv) are wrong; option B wrongly calls (i) wrong.

Answer: C

Moving a traditional library to a hybrid or digital library is a change in structure, services and staff roles, and it is handled through change management: planning the shift, preparing staff, and managing resistance. Re-engineering redesigns processes from the ground up, crisis management deals with emergencies, and project management handles a particular task with time and cost limits. The answer is change management. The shift also calls for new skills among staff, such as handling licences and digital preservation.