Leadership and the evolution of academic librarianship

Leadership and leadership development in academic libraries: a review

“…In an earlier review, Bailey (1992) suggests five groups of leadership strategies for librarians at associate or assistant director level; these include vision, communication skills, organizational learning, empowerment of others and integrity. In another paper, academic library leaders offer recommendations to librarians wishing to exercise leadership: be visible, volunteer, take chances, speak up, stay knowledgeable of higher education issues, find mentors; develop skills and work hard (Mech, 1996) (Shoaf, 2004). Taking an approach different from a traditional checklist of traits, Herold (2013) introduces to the profession the concept of being a mindful leader, who pays attention in a non-judgmental way, is emotionally intelligent, and can create a culture of engagement and energy in the organization.…”

Mining the Cultural Evidence: Situating Planning and Leadership within the Academic Library Culture

“…The literature on library leadership (Garvin, Edmonson, & Gino, 2008;Hernon & Rossiter, 2007;Hernon & Schwartz, 2008;Mathews, 2002;Mech & McCabe, 1998;Riggs, 1999) discusses the emergence of leadership theories and styles, such as situational, distributed, authentic, transactional, and transformational leadership, and focuses on examining leadership competencies and effectiveness.…”

Academic Libraries and Toxic Leadership

“…Although these changes are not unique to academic libraries, as "other public agencies are finding that organizational goals and assessment criteria are changing rapidly," (Neville, 1980, p.20) they have deeply impacted academic libraries' nature of work. Academic libraries continue to do more with less and are under more pressure to innovate to prove their value to their institutions (Kaarst-Brown, Nicholson, von Dran, & Stanton, 2004;Mech, 1996;Neville, 1980;. Neville (1980) declared academic libraries were entering a mid-life transition toward the administrative stage of the organizational life cycle in 1980, hence it could be that many academic libraries in 2015 are transitioning out of the bureaucratic stage or have already begun a renewal stage.…”

“…This transitional period required that libraries have agile and forwardthinking library leaders. In the 1990s academic libraries that were not able to successfully revitalize their units with the limited resources available to them, after budget cuts and downsizing at their universities, had to profoundly reduce services (Kaarst-Brown et al, 2004;Mech, 1996).…”

“…Although the LIS literature has somewhat documented that academic libraries have had critical transitions over the past three decades, there is still more to be done. It is again time for academic libraries to take the revitalization phase seriously if they wish to survive the next 30 years (Düren, 2013;Mech, 1996;Rowley, 2013).…”