Risk Management: It’s Implications for Library and Information Centres

Abstract

The development and dissemination of information in various forms and media on a local, national and international level has envisaged the librarians to be advocative in all means of information service provided from their libraries. Higher education is experiencing a dramatic influx with a new generation of faculty with different sources of information. This article deals with the definition of risk management and identification of the various areas of risks in library environment. The applications of risk management in libraries start from the collection development, through publishers / vendors for different types of documents. The different types of risk include:  Assessing the organization  Collection management  Access rights by the users  Scholarly communication  Risks associated with the migration  Consortia  Staff training and recruitment  Preservation  Use of technology by the students, faculty and library staff. The strategies for managing the risks are explained for the following:  By having discussions, group meetings, etc, the information requirements of users, faculty and students can be found;  Communicating with other agencies like library schools, professional associations for finding out the latest syllabus, in order to develop the content accordingly.  Detailed discussion with publishers / vendors for collection management covering all aspects of the future needs /demands / changes;  For collecting the resources from external sources, resource sharing and access to the databases along with Internet;  Consortium approach for collection development, content management, information services and preservation;  Hiring staff with competitive skills and also develop skills for the existing staff, by providing in-house training; and  Preservation aspect could be resolved by consortia approach by discussing the formats, storage medium, software availability, upgradation of hardware, etc. The author concluded that the library professionals should take all precautions of risk management and provides risk free managerial services to the users on time.