14 COGNOTES              2017 MIDWINTER HIGHLIGHTS ISSUE

Leadership and Development Important at All Levels

By Sara Zetterval, Hennepin County Library, Minneapolis, Minn.

The ACRL Presidential Forum, “Leadership Development for New Library Roles,” brought together data and personal expertise to shape a vision for invested management. Three panelists were hosted by Kathlin Ray, University of Nevada Reno. Together, they presented a compelling case for developing library staff members beyond their current roles using care and practicality.

Kathleen DeLong, University of Alberta Libraries, laid a foundation for the recommendations to follow by sharing data from a series of two surveys measuring staffing priorities in Canadian academic libraries. Conducted in 2003 and 2013, they showed a significant shift toward specialization in librarian roles. The top three skills that managers identified for their librarians in 2013 were technology skills, specialized skills, and research skills. Specialized skills were ranked as important by 77 percent of respondents in 2013, up from only 33 percent in 2003. They were also marked as the most difficult positions to fill. Speaking from the perspective of a manager, DeLong asked, “How can leaders position themselves for positive role change?” She invited managers to support risk-taking and failure, and to promote individual as well as organizational success.

The second part of the session was presented by Dane Ward, Illinois State University. His background is in education, with a more recent focus on organizational change in libraries. He pointed out that “new library roles will emerge to the degree that they contribute to core institutional goals” and encouraged interdisciplinary team-building. Ward also emphasized the connective nature of librarianship and suggested that libraries look for gaps that other disciplines aren’t filling and offer to fill them. He asserted that library managers should work alongside staff members to solve problems together: “Innovation is a group process, not decision-making from the top.” This community-focused approach emphasized organizational culture and developing staff capacity to learn together.

“Innovation is a group process, not decisionmaking from the top.”

Amy Kautzman, California State University Sacramento, brought the information from prior presenters to the next level. She shared information from the Oxford Martin study on the future of employment predicting that 99 percent of library clerical and technical positions are in jeopardy due to advancing technologies. This figure gives more urgency to the recommendations made by DeLong and Ward that managers nurture leadership in their staff members. Kautzman proclaimed, “If we aren’t talking to our 40-and-under staff members about their life plans, we’re doing them a disservice.” Referring to the concept of Transformational Leadership, she recommended a non-hierarchical system in which managers and staff work in tandem. This approach not only develops the skills of gifted employees who will move forward with the library; it also helps staff members whose positions are becoming obsolete by equipping them with skills to move on to other work. That kind of turnover in turn provides opportunities to create and staff the new roles libraries need.

The thread running through the presentations was to nurture. They stressed the importance of individual development, leadership at all levels, mentorship, and a caring culture. Kautzman acknowledged the reality that most managerial decisions are made based on profit rather than humanitarian concerns but also stressed that at the end of the day, she wanted to be able to look into the eyes of her employees and say she had done all she could for them.

VISITING THE INNOVATION PAVILION IN THE EXHIBITS

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2017 MIDWINTER EXHIBITS