Abstract: ~anagement Much, if not most, of the trouble academic library managers suffer is related to their weak grasp of what they are or should be trying to be.What tradition there was is broken.and, except in very small libraries, useless in any event.Academic librarians tend, like most academics, to stumble into administration without conscious awareness that they are changing from one ill-definea profession to another, perhaps an.even worse defined one, and they tend to rely upon images rather than ideas for guidance.An attempt is made in this paper to delineate the idea of what it is to bei an administrator of an academic library and to suggest changes that • could be made, unlikely though they may be, to ameliorate the present situation.IF THE ART OF LIBRARIANSHIP is largely ill-or underdeveloped, library management is certainly its most backward branch.I was struck with that familiar thought anew as I read Arthur McAnally and .Robert Downs' "The Changing Role of Directors of University Libraries."1I realized that many of the quondam directors questioned by the authors on what happened to them and their ilk had little idea of what had hit them.They knew it wasn't their fault and muddled around among the cliches with which academic managers comfort one another: higher management did it, large impersonal trends and forces, or the students, or the faculty, or the other librarians, or all or none of the above were responsible.Finally, in one of those traditionally reasonable conclusions for such surveys, the authors conclude that nothing has really changed