Library Leadership & Management (LL&M) (E-Journal)
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Managing Through the Void: Overseeing a Library Department Amid Personnel Vacancies
No full textThere are a variety of reasons a library department may experience a temporary position vacancy. Whatever the cause, this presents managers with the often overwhelming task of filling in the gaps, or even predicting and coping with stress inadvertently placed on the remainder of the department. Managers may be planning further into the future than we may be accustomed to in ordinary times. This brief, practice-based piece calls out the best ways to tame this frustration through maintaining three key focuses
New Year’s Resolutions, Career Outlook, and Personality: An Investigation of Library Employees’ Goal Setting Behaviors
No full textMany organizations use goal setting as a professional tool to get employees to achieve gains within the workplace. Many librarians in the United States participate in setting New Year’s resolutions as part of their personal goal-setting behavior. As studies indicate correlations between personal goal-setting behaviors, performance and attitude in professional roles, the researchers posit that learning how library employees set and achieve New Year’s resolutions could provide insight into how organizations can improve employee goal setting. An online survey was conducted in 2016 with 512 respondents. Results showed that respondents who self-reported as ambitious tend to be more successful in achieving their goals. Furthermore, ambitious respondents utilized goal-setting best practices more than less ambitious respondents. Respondents with a less clear sense of purpose in life tended to put in less effort or gave up more often than those with a clearer sense of purpose
Creating an Organizationally Embedded Strategic Communication Plan for Libraries
No full textThis is the first in a series of articles appearing in Library Leadership & Management that provides library leaders with an outline for creating a sustainable and consistent communication plan across all platforms and venues. Going beyond traditional marketing and branding, this series suggests a comprehensive approach to communication - both to people and to the computer networks that people use – for everyday communication, for disaster planning, and for the library’s strategic endeavors. There are many elements that can communicate and convey a library’s identity and values – social media posts, budget structures, library guides, strategic plans, etc. A coordinated and strategic plan for communication and outreach will strengthen your library’s value by creating a common experience and understanding by your library community, including library patrons, boards, administrators, and donors as well as internet search engines, social media networks, and their users. This plan will keep the library focused on objectives from the strategic plan and not straying beyond the plan, which could otherwise drain resources from what is trying to be achieved. This first article outlines the purpose and development of a library’s values, mission, and vision statements, a strategic plan, a communication plan, and the embedding of that plan in organizational culture. Subsequent articles explore offshoots of this communication including budgeting message and presentation, social media strategies, and search engine optimization and semantic web identity
Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Culture, and Library Leadership
No full textThis article discusses the importance of emotional intelligence and emotional culture, provides an overview of emotional intelligence and each of its components, explores ways library leaders can develop each emotional intelligence component, and describes ways library leaders can use emotional intelligence to influence a library's emotional culture
Mentoring in Academic Libraries
No full textThe authors, who have each engaged in mentoring in higher education, surveyed academic librarians in 2017 on their mentoring experiences. Those findings are placed alongside best practices drawn from the literature to discover what motivates academic librarians to participate in mentoring and how it impacts them professionally and personally. Based on this evidence, the authors encourage colleagues to seek professional development through mentoring opportunities.
“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.” Dr. Albert Schweitze
Agile-ish: Bringing Agile and Scrum into Project Management for Digital Collections Metadata
No full textImplementations of agile values and principles are increasingly seen in project management beyond their original home in software development. Most library projects drawing on agile and scrum, agile’s most popular methodology, have needed to adapt these principles and methods to varying degrees, but most have been in environments similar to software development. The Pennsylvania State University Libraries’ cataloging department was interested to see if agile and scrum approaches could be successful in managing a metadata project involving an ad hoc team, composed of members volunteering part of their time to the project, and inexperienced in the work needed for the project. While the Penn State Libraries project used extensively modified versions of agile and scrum, we have concluded that using these principles and methods, even if adapted, can greatly improve the process and the outcome of many projects
The Favor of the People: What Library Leaders can Learn from The Prince
No full textThe Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli is as relevant to leaders today as it was when it was written in the 16th Century. The main message of Machiavelli is to keep the people you lead happy. This runs counter to the incomplete and superficial understanding many people have of Machiavelli. The Prince describes six ways to keep people happy: be a good leader and a competent professional, build and maintain relationships with people, stop problems before they start, empower people, have strong values and high standards, and have a vision. This article will briefly explore each of these areas and describe their importance to library leaders
Using the Start | Stop | Continue Framework to Improve Library Operations
No full textThe Start|Stop|Continue Framework is a powerful tool for structuring conversations to elicit honest input from library personnel at all levels. Adapting this framework for team discussions rather than individual feedback enables libraries to create opportunities for meaningful engagement and meaningful improvement to library operations