The Economics of Library Innovation

BASICCHANGES IN THE economics of libraries are forcing librarians to look at innovative strategies to achieve cost-effective operations. A major problem confronting librarians is how to allocate resources, reduced by budget cuts and inflation, to satisfy an increasing user demand for more responsive library service. The economics of information and the economics od innovation are relatively new fields of study. There are no theories or recipe books to which one can turn for solutions to problems in library resource allocation or library innovation. In the past, innovation in libraries was focused primarily on products of technology. Three recent developments -automation, low-cost rapid communications capability, and demands for better managerial performance -have led to a broader concept of innovation, which is centered on processes, functions and human behavior. Drucker states: “Innovation is not a technical term. It is an economic and social term. Its criterion is not science or technology, but a change in the economic or social environment, a change in the behavior of people as consumers or producers, as citizens, as students or as teachers, and so on.”l Innovation does not happen by chance. It is a deliberate and specific change which is introduced in response to changes in the library’s external environment, or to help the library accomplish its objectives more effectively. This paper is concerned solely with the economics of innovation in academic libraries. The social and managerial aspects, while important

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