AN ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACTUAL AND PREFERRED LIBRARY GOALS BASED ON THE PERCEPTIONS OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS

The purpose of this study was to develop a theoretical model which may prove of value to academic librarians in identifying goals relating to education objectives, service requirements, library resource development, technological change and other goal areas. The study also examines such factors as librarian goal preferences, position and responsibility, years of experience, size of collection and budget and their impact on the goal structure of selected academic libraries. This investigation was based on the organizational goal theory utilized by Gross and Grambsch in their study of university goals.; The following hypotheses were formulated for this study: (1) the goals that academic librarians perceive as being the most important actual goals will also tend to be the most important preferred goals; (2) academic librarians' perceptions of actual and preferred goals are influenced by their position and responsibility; (3) academic librarians' perceptions of actual and preferred goals are influenced by their type of academic library, public or private; (4) there is an association between the goal perceptions of academic librarians at selected academic public or private libraries and the physical characteristics of those libraries and (5) the classification of output and support goals differs with respect to type of academic library. The thirty-five goals investigated in this study were divided into two major categories: output goals (sixteen) and support goals (nineteen). A questionnaire was mailed to 336 academic librarians at twenty-six academic libraries of Doctorate-Granting-II Universities. A return rate of 70% usable questionnaires was achieved.; The following conclusions were reached: (1) output goals were perceived as being pursued over support goals; (2) position and responsibility was found to be statistically significant as a predictor of goal values and rankings, i.e., library administrators' perceptions of actual and preferred goals were different from public and technical service librarians; (3) management and other support related goals were preferred by all librarian groups over the "traditional" library mission/service related output goals and (4) type of academic library, years of experience and (5) physical characteristics did not influence librarians' perceptions of actual and preferred goals.