Carl Antonucci - The LITA Leadership Guide: The Librarian as Entrepreneur, Leader, and Technologist

Digitizing Flat Media: Principles and Practices

The Librarians Introduction to Programming Languages

Library Service Design: A LITA Guide to Holistic Assessment, Insight, and Improvement

Data Visualization: A Guide to Visual Storytelling for Librarians

Mobile Technologies in Libraries: A LITA Guide

Innovative LibGuides Applications

Integrating LibGuides into Websites

Protecting Patron Privacy: A LITA Guide

The LITA Leadership Guide: The Librarian as Entrepreneur, Leader, and Technologist

The Librarian as Entrepreneur, Leader, and Technologist

Edited by

Carl Antonucci

Sharon Clapp

Foreword by Maureen Sullivan

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 9781442279018 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442279025 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442279032 (electronic)

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For my wife, Luisa, and my children, Natalie, Antonio, and David.

Carl Antonucci

With gratitude to my dear husband, Chris Michaud, who has been my strength in all of our years together.

Sharon Clapp

Maureen Sullivan

Librarians have long recognized the need to pursue innovation to ensure that the programs and services offered to students, faculty, and scholars meet their ever-changing needs and expectations. The evolving digital world brings new challenges and calls for every librarian to develop as a leader, entrepreneur, and technologist. The confluence of these three areas of practice demands a renewed commitment to professional development and a disciplined approach to learning a set of new competencies. The professional practice of librarians is becoming more complex. It brings challenges and also opportunities. To embrace and carry out the three roles of entrepreneur, leader, and technologist requires a clear and deep understanding of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that are essential to effective practice. The future of academic and research libraries and that of our profession depends upon this commitment.

The librarian as entrepreneur is a role rich with opportunities to make a difference in higher education and to make a significant contribution to student learning, faculty teaching, research, and scholarship. The entrepreneur recognizes that creativity is a capacity in all of us and takes steps to nurture this in self and others. This leads to innovation in practice when collaboration and experimentation become a way of life in professional practice. The librarian as entrepreneur embraces opportunities to rethink current practice, to create new programs and services, to rethink and redesign.

The librarian as leader is an essential role, both inside the library organization and in the larger external environment. Every librarian needs to be a leader whether by the formal requirements of her or his position in the library or through more informal situations where leadership is undertaken because opportunities present themselves. Both formal and informal leaders must have the capacity to engage, inspire, and motivate those with whom they work. They need to have strong interpersonal skills, especially the ability to communicate and manage relationships with a variety of diverse individuals. Leaders need to have emotional intelligence; be willing to take risks and pursue new initiatives and areas of work; deal with different constituencies and manage their different expectations; articulate a compelling vision while engaging others to work together to create a shared vision; and foster a work environment in which diversity, inclusion, collaboration, future-focus, and high performance define the organizational culture.

The librarian as technologist role is one that challenges some, especially those who are beyond midcareer. This role is as important and critical to successful organizational performance as the other two. The time has come for every librarian to have a general knowledge of the key technology systems and applications in libraries and to possess the core skills of the technologist. As we move further and deeper into the digital world every competent professional must be committed to keeping up with the key trends and developments in this area. This may be a challenging area for individual professional development, but it also is an area that is essential for personal mastery in our field.

The successful integration of these three roles throughout the field will enable the collaboration and commitment necessary to rethink and redesign our work, our organizational structures, facility and space design, service models, and what it will mean to be a librarian in the academy of the future. The contributions of librarians to higher education often go unnoticed and underappreciated. It is time to step forward and embrace the roles of entrepreneur, leader, and technologist and to do so in collaboration with colleagues in our libraries and across the field.