Assessment of Re-engineering process of library services in Universities in Kenya

Abstract

Innovation and transformation have been tantamount with the library environment as libraries strive to rethink the services they offer. Responding to calls for restructuring their processes and services, libraries are continuously redefining their services to align them to changing information landscape and user needs. However, the success of these reinventions remains wanting. Many factors account for success or failure of business process re-engineering initiatives, chief amongst them being the process of re-engineering. It is against this backdrop that this study examined the process of re-engineering library services in universities in Kenya. Specifically, the study set out to: assess the re-engineered services that university libraries in Kenya have embraced to cope with the changing information landscape, explore the process adopted by university libraries in re-engineering their services, analyze the critical success factors attributed to the process of re-engineering in university libraries, analyze the challenges experienced in redesigning and implementing the new library services and propose a framework to streamline the process of re-engineering library services in universities in Kenya.. To achieve these objectives, this research was guided by the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) theory and specifically the Davenport and Short’s methodology of process re-engineering. The research adopted an interpretivist paradigm and employed a qualitative research approach using a multiple case study research design. The study population was librarians and library users from universities in Kenya. Purposive sampling was used to select six universities from whom data was collected from 55 respondents through face-to-face interviews with librarians and focus group discussions with the library users. This was complemented with observation and document analysis. The data collected was analyzed following Ritchie and Spencer 1994 framework analysis technique. The study findings show that university libraries have re-engineered their services to respond to the changing information landscape and nurture a competitive advantage, but users are not aware of these services and has not increased the usage of the library. The libraries only partially considered the critical success factors during re-engineering resulting in failure to optimally achieve the intended outcomes. Libraries are re-engineering for themselves, so as to show they have aligned their services with technological changes, while overlooking the client to whom the service is intended for. Evaluation mechanisms were based on the traditional metrics and hence failed to assess the new services. Despite the progress noted in re-engineering, challenges continue to negatively impact on the efforts. As a result, the study has proposed a process workflow to be followed when re-engineering for optimum benefits. Additionally, the study recommends that CSFs should be considered wholly for successful re-engineering venture. The study concludes that non-engagement of library users in the design process has led to lack of awareness hence failure to achieve the overall objective of re-engineering. It is expected that this study will offer insight into the process of re-engineering in university libraries and the benefits that can be gained by embracing the concept for optimum output. The proposed workflow and evaluation template will hopefully guide librarians when re-engineering their services for improved user experience