The 1990s provided many challenges for Canadian academic library managers. Financial cutbacks at the federal and provincial levels quickly trickled down to universities and their libraries, and administrators were forced to learn how to manage with shrinking budgets.

Ethel Auster and Shauna Taylor's Downsizing in Academic Libraries is a comprehensive study of the trials faced by Canadian academic libraries in the 1990s. The authors surveyed opinions from over 1100 librarians from across the country. Based on these surveys, they describe how downsizing was implemented, its impact on programs and services, organizational climate, and employees, and the legacy of downsizing on user services and program delivery. Their study also includes a statistical portrait of library expenditures, holdings, and staffing levels set against trends in enrolment for the period 1982–83 to 1997–98.

Downsizing in Academic Libraries will be of interest to policy makers in government, universities, and libraries; to managers and staffs of academic libraries; to researchers, teachers, and students of organizational strategies, processes, and behaviour, and library and information studies; and to all stakeholders of academic libraries who are interested in what has taken place over the past decade as a result of downsizing in Canadian academic research libraries.

Ethel Auster is a professor in the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto.

Ethel Auster's profile page

Shauna Taylor is an information consultant and independent scholar living in Ottawa.

Shauna Taylor's profile page