Page 75 - DLIS406_ACADEMIC_LIBRARY_SYSTEM

Academic Library System

Notes together in projects and tasks beyond their everyday responsibilities. It is, indeed, an excellent
opportunity for project leaders to appraise any staff member involved. One advantage is that
the staff member will receive comments from an appraiser who is not his/her own line manager.
Furthermore, many projects involved tasks such as project management, liaison and coordination,
publicity, reception, editing, publishing and public speaking, are totally different from the
daily routine tasks staff members are handling. Performance appraisal in this regard could
reveal a staff’s potential in areas other than their regular library duties. Thus, management
may be able to explore potentials of staff members that are unaware of previously.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:

1. HRM stands for ...... .
2. Job enrichment was developed by the American psychologist Frederick Hertzberg in the
...... .
3. Partington and Stainton (2003) present ...... important purposes of performance appraisal.

7.4 Summary

• To increase the commitment level of employees and growth in quality movement, senior
management team is now increasing the role of training.
• Job enrichment is an attempt to motivate employees by giving them the opportunity to
use the range of their abilities. It is an idea that was developed by the American psychologist
Frederick Hertzberg in the 1950s.
• In the digital world nowadays when information is readily available on the Internet, it
is the people who make a library different from the search engines.
• In the Dictionary of Human Resource Management (2001), appraisal is defined as “the
process of evaluating the performance and assessing the development/training needs of
an employee.”
• Many academic libraries carry out staff performance appraisal annually. Yet in some
libraries, it is not uncommon that staff members do not take staff appraisal seriously
enough.
• Not every library requires appraisers to work out the performance objectives with appraisees
in a separate exercise in advance.
• The first key to a successful appraisal system is the appraiser. The appraisers must be
able to see the values of the appraisal exercise and good training for appraisers is,
therefore, essential.
• As Jordan (2002) criticizes, “Appraisal may be seen as ‘form-dominated’ and staffs see
the exercise as one of form-filling.”

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