Young and in Charge: Early-Career Community College Library Leadership

Although young leaders and entrepreneurs have become prevalent in the business and technology industries, academic libraries remain much more traditional. Library administrator job advertisements often require seven to ten years of library experience in progressively responsible roles as well as supervisory experience. This article shares the experiences of an early-career community college library administrator working with different generations, provides suggestions to become a manager through intentional leadership, and explores how managers learn to lead. Additionally, the author encourages community colleges to consider younger and/or newer librarians that bring a different perspective to addressing the critical issues facing community college libraries today.     

Library Startup: Reflections on Building a New Community College Library from Scratch

ABSTRACT

The author describes the challenges and rewards of creating and growing a new community college library from the ground up, sharing details about the new college, the state of the library when she arrived as director, and the process of prioritizing the organization's development. She further describes particular lessons gained through this experience, including maintaining perspective, focusing growth in productive directions, and being willing to experiment even if it means there will be failure as well as success. The article will appeal in particular to librarians who have the rare opportunity to launch a new college library as well as those who are working on reinventing small college libraries.     

Leadership Reflections: Resiliency in Library Organizations

Similar to individuals, organizations display characteristics that speak to qualities and abilities. Our guest writer, Lisa Bodenheimer, discusses a trait that is critical for library organizations during this period of constant change and transformation. Resiliency is the ability to rebound and flex as circumstances shift enabling an organization to thrive and adjust during difficult times. This skill is typically developed through experiences, but, as Ms. Bodenheimer outlines, organizations are able to strategize in order to build employee and organizational resilience. Such a proactive approach will enable a library organization to better weather challenging situations and times as difficulties will enviably occur. The following article provides practical suggestions for library organizations that will enable them to be more successful while leading and managing in a changing environment.     

Leadership Reflections: Parent Leadership

Abstract

There are many types of leadership but little known is parent leadership – how parental skills are applied to the workplace. Libraries depend more on soft skills that facilitate work and advance an organization. How individuals work together in an organization is just as critical as the work they accomplish. This depends on the ability of employees to develop and utilize their soft skills complementing their technical skills and expertise. As leaders focus more on behavior, they may tap into their parenting techniques in order to coach, guide, direct, and resolve conflicts. While a leader may not be able to ground an employee or take away their TV watching privileges, they might find themselves resorting to similar techniques in their management.     

Leadership Reflections: Leadership Paradoxes

Leadership faces a number of paradoxes that can be challenging and confusing, particularly as individuals take on new leadership roles. Employees want leaders to be decisive but participatory in decision making, focused on big pictures but contribute to detailed discussions, and engage but not micromanage. It is confusing as mixed messages are given to leaders and the opinions of employees vary, creating a situation in which it is difficult for leaders to fully understand employee expectations. Leaders not only need to understand these paradoxes but develop methods to balance employee expectations and communication strategies that help employees appreciate the balancing act that each leader must develop.     

Leadership Reflections: Leadership Skills for Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is a process that infuses knowledge and decision making across an organization. It not only encourages decision making based on data but also fosters communication among personnel for informed practices and processes. The social connections within an organization facilitate the formal structure and encourage personnel to share expertise, insights, and past experiences to inform decision making. Such a highly interactive organization requires leadership that supports and encourages knowledge management practices. A successful knowledge management organization depends on certain leadership characteristics in order to foster interactions that contribute to the processes. A variety of characteristics and patterns will offer leaders understanding on how to lead within a knowledge management library.     

高职院校图书馆建设的再思考

对现阶段高职院校图书馆建设存在的问题进行深入研究,发现现阶段高职院校图书馆建设未能满足高职院校的发展需求,建设资金不足,馆藏不合理,专业建设特点不突出是其主要问题。提出要将高职教育理念融入到图书馆建设过程中,图书馆建设要"适而精,建立高职特色馆藏体系"的高职院校图书馆建设思路。     

音乐院校图书馆联盟建设的思考

在阐述音乐院校图书馆联盟建设必要性的基础之上,应用SWOT进行分析,提出建设音乐院校图书馆联盟的措施,并提出建设音乐院校图书馆联盟应注意的问题。     

Leadership Reflections: Organizational Culture

Abstract

Organizations function as small societies with their unique behaviors, patterns, and communication. Organizational culture describes how individuals work within libraries and the patterns, assumptions, values, attitudes, and behavior that help an organization to operate within its environment and achieve, or not achieve, its mission. Effective leaders must understand the operational framework of their libraries in order to be successful in managing or to change the culture in support of strategic goals. Changing the culture of an organization is difficult and a long-term process with a realistic understanding of the current behaviors and a determined vision for how an organization should work. There are some specific strategies that may aid leaders in transforming a library culture into a productive and effective set of behaviors that will contribute to a library’s success.     

Leadership Reflections: Organizational Language

Leadership language communicates more than words. Leaders are able to use the power of language to not only articulate an organizational vision but to create excitement and support around that vision. Library leaders can model organizational values through speech strengthening a written policy into practice. Organizational culture is difficult to change but leaders can counter negative and deceptive messages into productive statements that help employees move forward to understand and embrace library strategic goals. How a leader chooses to use language to articulate a vision, advance organizational values, and to change organizational culture is critical. Ignoring language opportunities will hinder not only leader success but organizational success as well.     

Leadership Reflections: Advisory Bodies

An important component of librarianship is the connection between a library and its community. Advisory committees or boards are a valuable tools for a leader to manage this connection and provides a leader with external expertise that can make a significant impact on a library community. However, advisory bodies need to be established for specific purposes and require a significant time commitment to ensure that members are contributing in a meaningful way. There are cautions in working with advisory bodies but the benefits of tapping into the potential benefits are worth the time and effort in working with community volunteers.     

Leadership Reflections: Extrovert and Introvert Leaders

Leadership calls for the ability to work well with people, communicate with stakeholders, participate in and lead meetings, and often public speaking. As a leader advances within an organization, expectations increase for the individual to engage with others as leaders spend more time working with colleagues and stakeholders to advance the organization. These expectations tend to favor extroverts in leadership roles but organizations may overlook the strengths of introverts as leaders losing out on the potential for effective management. An understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of personality types will help individuals as well as organizations in developing leadership in order to achieve organizational goals.     

高校图书馆建立学科馆员制度的思考

阐述了高校图书馆建立学科馆员的意义,指出建立学科馆员的条件是丰富的信息资源、用户、一定素质的馆员、合理的管理机制。重点论述了在这四者的基础上根据各个大学图书馆的具体条件分层次分步骤逐步实行学科馆员制度。     

Evaluation of Library Workbooks in a Community College Setting

No abstract available for this article.     

社区文化与社区图书馆

通过对社区文化与社区图书馆的概述，提出了建设社区图书馆是社区文化发展的必然选择，社区图书馆建设的三个必要条件，社区图书馆的建设原则及社区图书馆建设中应注意的几个问题。     

Shared Leadership in a Community Theater Group: Filling the Leadership Role

In contrast to research in which an individual leader is assigned or expected to emerge, musical theater productions provide an opportunity to explore how leadership is shared among the director, assistant director, music director, choreographer, and stage manager in a naturally occurring group. This ethnographic study explores how one community theater group managed the sharing of leadership roles when the primary director assumed a passive or ineffective role. The study explores the communication and affective responses of the secondary leaders and cast members when they perceived that the primary leadership failed to function and then examines how secondary leaders and cast members communicated to share the leadership to produce successful theatrical performances. The results have implications for other groups with shared leadership structures.     

关于图书馆立法的几点思考

首先评估了我国关于图书馆立法的现状,然后着重阐述制定<图书馆法>的意义,最后谈作者对制定<图书馆法>应包含内容的一点思考.     

图书馆开展FAQ服务的思考

从提高信息咨询服务水平出发,分析图书馆FAQ服务的特点及现状,探讨加强图书馆FAQ服务的具体措施。     

确立图书馆学自我观的认识

世纪之交,图书馆学的发展面临的既是挑战,同时也是难得的机遇.在这历史的转折关口,反思我们的图书馆学,无论是从哪个方面、哪个角度上反思,最终都落于这样一个问题:应该怎样看待图书馆学走过的道路,筹划图书馆学发展的未来?即如何看待图书馆学自我.