Total Quality Management, British Standard accreditation, Investors In People and academic libraries

Organisations, be they public or private, have been touched by a rhetoric which promises a new order of things; quality management systems (QMS) like Total Quality Management (TQM) and BS EN ISO 9000 (formerly BS 5750 and hereafter referred to as ISO 9000) are imbued with this rhetoric. There has been much in the library and information services (LIS) literature on the merits or otherwise of such systems; for quality is accepted generally, or as Chase (1988) declares, 'quality is no longer an option - it is a positive requirement for the 1990s. However, there is much conjecture over the means to this end. With regard to academic LIS, the debate has rubbed shoulders with the, separate, quality debate in higher education over quality assessment. Thus, are initiatives in the academic LIS influenced by their parent organisation? Alternatively, are academic LIS more likely to adopt QMS in the light of the Follett (1993) report, which called for a more integrated view of customer service and quality amidst the rapid change in universities and technology?