Leading requires showing up! In fact, it’s one of the secrets to leading: being there, volunteering, following through.
Ann Wolpert, MIT Director of Libraries, did just that as she gave the keynote at Simmons College GSLIS (Graduate School of Library and Information Science) Alumni Day at 9am on a cold March 30 Saturday morning! I think we had all struggled in – at least the older half of us – see below. Based upon the multi-school event’s theme Educate, Empower, Transform: Preparing Leaders for the 21st Century, Ann focused most on leadership. She did not have any one thing to say, but touched upon a number of topics. Not least was showing up.
As for the 21st century: that’s a done deal. Wolpert noted two out of three librarians are over forty-five years of age, which means there’s a generational handover looming in library-land. It was evident in the room – a mix of over 45 professionals like myself and ever younger graduate students; a noticeably different mix from my own mid-career-changing graduate school days. Fifteen years in the profession and I am already an old dog!
Here are my notes and observations-
Leadership is a popular topic. But, Wolpert noted, leadership and non-profit yielded only 112 titles in Amazon among the 100,000 plus titles to be had: the theory of leading and managing the non-profit organization is just now being formulated. She pointed to Harvard Business School’s recent course addition, Effective Leadership of the Social Enterprise. Academy leadership and communication is very different from the commercial / private sector. Avoiding acrimony requires explanatory exposition and positioning. A decisive, bulleted, one-page, targeted memo would never do. It would insult the audience, Wolpert learned, as she tossed out many years honed communication style from her private sector experience.
Looking beyond the guild model of librarianship – a closed, self-contained tradition – is critical, Wolpert asserted. We must shake the mindset that we are the only folks who can exercise certain practices. As an example, she observed how biology is impacting many sciences directly, engineering and chemistry among them. [For me, explosive growth in interdisciplinary life sciences at Boston University and Brown University in the last twelve years demonstrates this - the one I know from working there, the second from reading the Providence Journal.] Likewise, librarians need to look to other skill sets that can be used to operate libraries well. Having worked in both the business and library worlds myself, Wolpert said what I have thought for years: cataloging and circulation equals inventory control. Apply business principles, processes, and techniques to collections, cataloging and other activities. Computer science partnerships can become critical to library leadership and success. Distribution and taxonomic models in the commercial world could benefit from librarian attention as well as help improve the library world. RFID comes to my mind as a current example.
This topic, summarized above, came up at least three different times during Wolpert’s keynote, including during Q & A. When asked about lagging salaries, Wolpert returned to this theme of advocating, specifically mentioning quantitative and qualitative measures, and that professionalizing the profession – not adopting an occupational stance – would lead to greater influence and authority. Listening to grumbling later that she had sidestepped the question suggested to me that some had not given careful consideration to one of Wolpert’s strongest points about leadership.
Wolpert had some fun with the letter C, as in chief executive officer and chief operating officer from the business world. In a nod to the unique library professional ethos she added community, citizenship, consistency (reliability), comraderie, customize, and children all based upon courage (e.g., Patriot Act stance) and conviction of values. To this I would add the word civic. Academic librarians in a private university and law librarians in prestigious firms cannot shake the civic foundation of the profession, so lacking elsewhere in American society and governance today. Wolpert substituted clarity of purpose to convey this aspect when talking about public libraries.
Two tremendous leadership opportunities to which Wolpert pointed loom in the academic realm today: implementing the National Institute of Health’s mandate to provide free and open access to government funded research in cooperation with the National Library of Medicine and participating in the National Science Foundation’s national cyberstructure effort – the RFP specifies librarians now in the second round of proposals – to support and manage large datasets currently lurking under desks and in labs everywhere in the academic world. These are opportunities in service to the academy, science, and the nation.
Librarians need to lead up. We report to people who know little about libraries. Here Wolpert told two funny stories about working with a businessman and an academic officer – “I don’t know what you do, but everyone tells me it’s important to them so keep doing it well.” Lead up with integrity. Lead by listening: the best leaders Wolpert knows have all said to her, “Sit down, how are you, tell me what I need to know.”
