Guardienne of the Tomes

A call for chapters! I'm turning my dissertation into the preface for a book intended to help our directors overcome what data indicate are severe shortfalls in leadership development prior to the directorship. I'm excited that ALA Editions has contracted for the work. See below, and contact me with questions or for more details! Edited volume title (tentative): So You Want to be an Academic Library Director: Leadership Lessons and Critical Reflections Publisher: ALA Editions Editor: Colleen S. Harris-Keith A number of studies have highlighted that we know what the leadership skills and qualities are that make a good library director. However, there’s not much research that says where academic librarians in particular develop those skills along their career paths, giving the impression that all paths are considered equal. Recently collected data from mid-sized college and university library directors (a much larger leadership pool than just ARLs) reveals disturbing information:...

I just completed a leadership analysis paper for one of the classes I am taking on Learning & Leadership for my EdD in same. The primary class text is Leaders and the Leadership Process: Readings, Self-assessments and Applications (Pierce & Newstrom, 2008), and it provides a great exploration of the different theories relating to, and dimensions of, leadership. the text combines syntheses of the literature with representative scholarly articles addressing various facets of leadership - I highly recommend it. There are some interesting discussions going on over at the LSW Friendfeed thread about library leadership and over at Andy's blog post addressing library measures of competence . I've got another post brewing about my own self-assessments and what I think they mean, and what I need to improve on my own tendencies, but for this post, I'm thinking about the feminine-masculine leadership trait continuum. Masculine traits include being aggressive, autocratic, tas...