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Let’s look at the contrasting qualities and attributes between the traditional pyramid and the evolving web as
models of organisational structure.
Pyramid Web
Rigid Hierarchies Flexible Teams
Isolation of Power Shared Responsibility
Fragmentation Integration
Control Open Access
Rigid Hierarchies vs. Flexible Teams
Top-down organisations are usually not very agile when it comes to responding to and more importantly,
managing change. And change is now a constant in the information marketplace. Flexible teams which
interact to develop a library’s Web will be better situated to perceive change in client groups and the industry
and can thereby incorporate it as necessary. Fluid boundaries support interdisciplinary projects, the structure
flattens and all participate in the creation of an enriched environment of discovery and disclosure.
Isolation of Power vs. Shared Responsibility
The concentration of power in a pyramid is at the narrow top. Quite often in these structures decisions have to
make their way from the bottom up through each hierarchical layer until they sometimes find their way to the
top by which time of course the plot may well be lost. In using the working group or team model which
succeeds in the process of Web development, responsibility gets shared across the structure. Senior
management must lead the organisation with a client based focus, ensure that they hire capable staff, train and
retrain when required, and then let the staff get on with it.
Fragmentation vs. Integration
Traditional departmental structures have segregated processes in the name of procedure, and often these
procedures are based on extinct systems such as a card catalogue in a library. More importantly, departmental
structure has in many cases fostered destructive competition, inequities and ultimately, the clientele has been
lost from sight. As systems or IT units have been introduced in libraries, they have typically been set up as yet
another department. Technology is no longer a trend or phenomenon; it needs to be seen as just one of a
number of components which are seamlessly integrated into the operations of information based services and
digital libraries. What’s needed is “information systems research, instead of computer technology research.
Digital libraries need to be tested with large collections and users since the value of the technology cannot be
evaluated in isolation." [Schatz 1995 [HREF4]]
Control vs. Open Access
Control from the pyramid “tower” may have worked or at least appeared to work when the main business of
information based services such as libraries was handling physical objects. In those days information was a
finite set of items. In the digital library we have moved to managing bits not atoms [Negroponte 1995].
Management is now responsible for making accessible to its clientele an expanding, widely distributed and
very complex network of information objects including databases, software, interfaces, metadata and people.
Not only do the clients need an open access structure, but also the staff will have to have such an environment
in order to move the organisation forward.
Libraries have been utilising technology for decades now, but the developments in the distribution of
information via the Internet and more specifically the World Wide Web have profound implications including
major shifts in the responsibilities of libraries. Technology will have to be truly integrated and managed by the