tag: Library leadership
Blog Post
December 20, 2021
Leading by Diversifying Collections
Announcing a New Project to Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Academic Libraries
As academic libraries seek to meaningfully engage with calls to improve practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) it is important that the library’s collections align with that mission. Yet, Ithaka S+R’s recent survey of library directors found that most libraries have not developed criteria for evaluating and making decisions related to the diversity of their collections. A library-wide strategy for diversifying collections also involves leveraging staff and resources in new ways…
Blog Post
August 17, 2021
Advancing Strategy through Staffing
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Library Leadership Roles
Following the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, we have seen a notable rise in academic libraries’ public commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and even more so following the social justice protests of summer 2020. These include drafting statements positioning the library in opposition to hate crimes and police violence and shifting resources towards new programs and services that address the needs of a wider variety of patrons. Overseeing these initiatives—and…
Blog Post
April 30, 2020
Leading a Library Today
How Library Directors Are Approaching the Challenges of the Current Moment
Over the past two weeks, Ithaka S+R has organized five roundtables for academic library leaders to help support their leadership during this time of disruption and uncertainty. In total, 40 library directors and two associate university librarians attended these sessions, representing every four-year institutional type. Participants introduced themselves by describing what has been working well for their libraries, the challenges they are facing, and their budgetary expectations. The discussion that followed–with minimum facilitation–then focused on the participants’ most…
Blog Post
October 17, 2017
Putting the Red Light, Green Light Model Into Practice
Last week, ASERL’s John Burger facilitated a webinar about licensing scholarly content. I provided an overview of the “Red Light, Green Light” model for internal library alignment that I proposed earlier this year. John Ulmschneider of Virginia Commonwealth University reflected on some the challenges that research libraries face and endorsed proceeding with a model of increasing alignment. Participants discussed the strengths of the Red Light, Green Light model and some of the ways…
Blog Post
September 15, 2017
Library Leaders and Talent Management
The recent Ithaka S+R/Mellon publication on equity, diversity, and inclusion in ARL member libraries expanded coverage of these issues to include all library employees, rather than focusing exclusively on “professional” employees, uncovering patterns that are only visible when examining employees more broadly. My colleagues Liam Sweeney and Roger Schonfeld found that racial homogeneity increases with every step up the management ladder–from support staff, to professionals, to managers, to leaders–library employees become less racially…
Blog Post
August 30, 2017
Diversity within ARL Member Libraries
Today, Ithaka S+R is releasing a report in conjunction with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation examining employee diversity within the libraries that are members of the Association of Research Libraries. This is the latest part of a collaborative series between Mellon and Ithaka S+R to support efforts in US higher education and cultural institutions to identify diversity strategies. This report, intended to serve as a benchmark against which future progress can be measured, finds that substantial…
Blog Post
August 30, 2017
Survey of University Libraries Shows Lack of Diversity in Leadership Roles
Survey Commissioned by the Mellon Foundation is Latest in Series Launched in Partnership with Higher Education and Cultural Institutions
New York, NY, August 30, 2017— A study released today by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Ithaka S+R suggests that research libraries struggle to build a diverse staff, with results showing a majority of leadership positions are held by white employees. Though gender ratios remain constant – with women in the majority in all employment categories –employees of color, regardless of position, appear to face a steeper climb towards advancement than their white colleagues. The survey, conducted by Ithaka…
Research Report
August 30, 2017
Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity: Members of the Association of Research Libraries
Employee Demographics and Director Perspectives
The library community considers diversity to be a core value.[1] But, the academic library sector has struggled with addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion. One key shortcoming has been in its efforts to ensure representative numbers of library employees of color.[2] In recent years, many academic librarians and observers of academic libraries have worked toward understanding this issue and the shortcomings of efforts to diversify, focusing on staffing, library education, and advocacy for diversity and social justice…
Issue Brief
August 16, 2017
Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing
There is widespread frustration within the academic library community with the seemingly uncontrollable price increases of e-resources, especially of licensed bundles of scholarly journals. The scholarly communications movement has vastly expanded academic and indeed public access to scholarly content. Yet prices for certain scholarly resources continue to outpace budget increases, and librarians do not feel in control of budgets and pricing. What if libraries found ways to bring together the whole library behind the objective of stabilizing or reducing what…
Blog Post
June 27, 2017
Ithaka S+R and the UCLA Senior Fellows Program
Ithaka S+R is proud to be a new sponsor of the UCLA Senior Fellows program and we are delighted that Brian Schottlaender, retiring University Librarian at the University of California, San Diego, has agreed to lead the program. I have been tangentially connected to this leadership program for most of my career. When I was the Library Education program officer at the Council on Library Resources in the early 1980s, we funded the first class of the UCLA Fellows…
Blog Post
May 18, 2017
Looking at Library Information Technology, Leadership, and Culture
New Issue Brief from Dale Askey and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Last year, I wrote on the changing organizational structure of academic libraries. Across my interviews with the former and current directors of large research libraries, I found a number of areas where these leaders were taking similar approaches—in redefining the role of the AUL, reallocating the staffing and materials budgets for general collections, and experimenting with new approaches to outreach and engagement roles. Their approach, however, was not as uniform when it came…
Issue Brief
May 18, 2017
Finding a Way from the Margins to the Middle
Library Information Technology, Leadership, and Culture
Given the number and variety of significant information technology projects led or supported by research libraries, one could incorrectly assume that information technology has been successfully integrated into our organizations. Unlike other recent library service program developments—namely, information literacy and scholarly communication, which also started on the margins—information technology has not found its way to the “middle” in most of our organizations. Information technology workers, not solely but in particular, experience a lingering divide between the culture of the information…
Blog Post
October 25, 2016
Leading a Library Differently
Last week, I spoke about leading academic libraries through organizational change. I am grateful to Joni Blake and the Greater Western Libraries Association for inviting me to speak with a group of about 40 research library directors. I drew from my recent project on organizational structure in research libraries, emphasizing that the library’s shift away from general collections and towards distinctive collections and richer campus engagement is widely…
Blog Post
September 23, 2016
Talking About Library Organization
Webinar Recording Now Available
Earlier this week, I was invited by John Burger and Joni Blake to present recent research findings to a webinar hosted by ASERL and GWLA. I focused on the recent Ithaka S+R study on Organizing the Work of the Academic Library. My presentation and the resulting q&a are recorded and available for download. More than 100 librarians joined…
Blog Post
August 18, 2016
How Should We Organize the Academic Library?
The View from the Director’s Chair
Library leaders are faced with no shortage of imperatives. They are building new strategies to align the library in support of the research enterprise and student success. They are grappling with the challenges of stagnant budgets and rising costs. They are rethinking their tangible collections and renovating their facilities. In support of these types of efforts, library leaders are beginning to take on new approaches to management and organization. Especially at large research libraries whose employees…
Research Report
August 18, 2016
Organizing the Work of the Research Library
Established in an era when the collection was truly at the heart of the library, and when building and maintaining it was the focus of its work, the research library is today moving away from organizational structures centered around building and supporting the general collection. Research libraries are undertaking a number of radical transformations: from print towards electronic, from local towards shared, from licensed towards open, from general towards distinctive, from collections towards engagement, from selector towards partner. To…
Blog Post
March 28, 2016
What’s Different about Digital Leadership?
Is leadership for a digital organization any different than any other kind of leadership? I think so, and that is the topic I chose to address when the National Federation of Advanced Information Systems (NFAIS) named me the 2016 Miles Conrad Memorial Lecturer last month. At this late stage in my career, I have the luxury of reflecting back on the growth and change I have seen in the library profession and thinking about why certain types of leadership have…
Issue Brief
March 28, 2016
Library Leadership for the Digital Age
The National Federation of Advanced Information Systems (NFAIS) honored me at its annual meeting in February with the Miles Conrad Award. I had an opportunity to give a lecture on any topic of my choosing. Leadership for the library profession has been a career-long interest, so I focused on what kind of leadership is required for the digital environment. In this Issue Brief, I include the highlights of the talk. In the February 29, 2016 issue of The New Yorker,…
Blog Post
February 1, 2016
Leadership for Academic Libraries
Developing leaders for academic libraries is an urgent need, especially at a moment when roles and responsibilities of these organizations are in such flux. One of the longest-running and successful programs, the UCLA Senior Fellows program, seemed to be at risk, only because it is totally dependent upon the extraordinary efforts of a single individual. After extensive discussions with Beverly Lynch, UCLA Professor and head of Senior Fellows, Ithaka S+R commissioned former Senior Fellows participant, Karen Calhoun, to carry out…
Blog Post
August 10, 2015
The Organizational Structure of Academic Libraries
Ithaka S+R is launching a new research project to examine how organizational structure affects the academic library’s capacity for effective decision-making on major strategic issues. My interest in this topic draws from Ithaka S+R’s experiences helping more than 75 academic libraries survey their own faculty members and students as well as our other library consultations. Through these projects, it is clear that some libraries are better positioned to act on the research they conduct and the evidence they gather…