The course offers education, not training, in the automation of information delivery. We look at what is involved in this. Organizations like libraries have sometimes been seen as purposive systems with such features as goals or missions, inputs, outputs, an environment, and a controlling subsystem. This view sees a library as being merely a more complex form of a standard 'hard' system, essentially just like an air-conditioner which reacts and adjusts to changing conditions to produce the desired goal or mission. Hard systems theory, though widely influential, has been a disaster in use in management.
Human beings make a big difference.
This has led to a 'soft systems' approach to organizations. We will consider hard, soft, and critical systems theory, and the methodologies arising from them. This will be conceived of not so much as a technical problem of computers, disk drives, and the like, but rather more of a socio-cultural one concerned with just exactly what you are trying to achieve with such a system. In the past, libraries, in one of their roles, have been such systems. Many issues arise.