Editorial

113

At College & Research Libraries we do not 
get many articles on the topic of academic 
library leadership. I wonder why, because 
I think this is one of the most important 
and enduring topics in our profession. 
Maybe it is because this is a big and dif-
ficult topic to pin down. What exactly is 
leadership? What aspects of leadership 
are we talking about: defining leadership, 
evaluating leadership styles, developing 
future leaders, planning leadership suc-
cession? As is always the case, a clear defi-
nition and problem statement are needed 
to construct a meaningful research project 
and report. 

Over the last two years, we have pub-
lished only two articles on this key topic: 
in July 2010, “Future Leaders’ Views on 
Organizational Culture” by Krisellen 
Maloney, Kristin Antelman, Kenning 
Arlitsch, and John Butler, and most re-
cently in our last issue (January 2012), 
“Cheerleaders, Opportunity Seeker, and 
Master Strategist: ARL Directors as En-
trepreneurial Leaders” by Maria Taesil 
Hudson Carpenter. 

Both these articles present creative 
research approaches to their topic. In the 
first of these, Maloney and her coauthors 
argue it is “urgent” that academic librar-
ies “nurture the talents of those who show 
the most leadership potential.” They 
present survey findings on future leaders’ 
perceptions of their existing and desired 
organizational cultures. The results are 
worrying. Too often the current library 
organizational culture, according to these 
future leaders, can be characterized as 
conservative, inflexible, and hierarchi-
cal—not very nurturing for new leader-
ship. They would prefer an “adhocracy 
culture” of openness, risk taking, and 
adjustment to continuous change.

These adhocracy traits fit right in 
with Carpenter ’s recent article on en-

Library Leadership

trepreneurial leadership in 
academic research libraries. 
Rather than using future 
leaders, Carpenter identifies 
eight (unnamed) Association 
of Research Libraries (ARL) directors who 
through their leadership record can be 
described as entrepreneurial. She engages 
this group in discussions of definition, 
traits, and evaluation of this contempo-
rary, highly regarded, style of leadership. 
Carpenter finds that the directors she 
interviews value the entrepreneurial ap-
proach to leadership, “especially the ele-
ments of risk-taking and allowing failure 
to happen, as well as finding, seizing, and 
exploiting opportunities.” While these 
two articles are completely independent 
of each other, as a reader, I cannot help but 
wonder if there might be some overlap 
and conflicting perceptions in these two 
leadership studies. Could it be an age old 
predicament of future leaders (let us call 
them “the up and coming”) always feeling 
they have to fight against a conservative 
and inflexible status quo, while current 
leaders (“the establishment”) bask in their 
perceived openness, risk taking abilities, 
and success?

Looking back further into earlier issues 
of College & Research Libraries, as I did not 
long ago for a leadership development 
essay I wrote in honor of the retirement 
of ARL Executive Director Duane Web-
ster, a shining star in the field of applied 
leadership development, you will find 
other provocative research on library 
leadership. I am particularly impressed 
with a series of articles on leadership 
written by the team of Peter Hernon, 
Ronald Powell, and Arthur Young. Our 
journal published their articles “Univer-
sity Library Directors in the Association 
of Research Libraries: The Next Genera-
tion” Part I (March, 2001), Part II (January, 



114 College & Research Libraries January 2012

2002), and “Academic Library Directors: 
What Do They Do?” (November, 2004). 
Some of the leadership attributes that this 
research team found most important to 
success—and which I think are timeless—
include “building a shared vision for the 
library, managing and shaping change, 
functioning in a political environment, 
developing a campus visibility, and build-
ing consensus in carrying out strategic 
directions.” Their last piece in this series 
should be required reading for all staff 
who wonder what their directors do all 
day. It has one the best concluding sen-
tences in any library article I have read: 
“Because leadership is both a present 
and future-oriented activity, one should 
always be thinking about next steps and 
nurturing those capabilities that will 

facilitate its arrival.”
While basic definitions and attributes 

of library leadership may be timeless, in 
practice, leadership is certainly temporal. 
Our leaders rise and fall with age and 
circumstance. Has the current generation 
of library leaders, many of whom are 
part of the “baby boom” generation now 
reaching retirement age, done an effective 
job in their own time under their own 
trying circumstances? And while they 
have struggled with their own leadership 
challenges in the here and now, have they 
found time and energy to nourish and 
prepare the next generation of future 
leaders to take their place? The proof will 
be, as they say, in the pudding—and in 
more new research and reports on library 
leadership.

Joseph Branin, Editor