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Comprehensive planning has become an essential element in the management of the modern university library. The purpose of this book is to help those now engaged in this important management function by summarizing the history of academic library planning and analyzing its practice in a group of major libraries over the past several decades. The most significant changes confronting academic libraries for the past several decades have been technological, social, and economic. Strategic planning is used as the tool for making these libraries more responsive to their environments and for helping them anticipate and prepare for change. Stanton F. Biddle examines the extent to which strategic planning is being employed, analyzes the planning documents, and develops guidelines for improving the quality of future planning efforts.

The volume begins with a discussion of strategic or long-range planning taken from the literature of management and organizational theory. The next chapter reviews the historical development of large academic libraries and the history of the application of contemporary management theories and practices to their administrations through the 1970s. The following chapter focuses on the widespread dissatisfaction with traditional approaches to library management in the 1960s and 1970s. The next two chapters compare library planning source documents, and the final chapter concludes with recommendations.