Library Leadership

I saw this article on Library Lost & Found as I was scanning my Feedly checking to see what others are talking about on the (many) blogs I follow and it caught my eye!  The title – 9 Ways to Become an Even Awesomer Library Leader in 2016 by Megan Hartline.  I love looking at articles and lists like this to see what I’m doing “right” and what I can improve on.

Currently, I’m not in a management role in my library, but I do take on a lot of projects and am looking at library management in the future.  But, that doesn’t mean I can’t be a leader, even though I’m not a manager.

I don’t want to take away from Megan’s article, so I won’t list the 9 ways, but it’s exciting to see things like “give back to the profession” by working on a committee or volunteering for your state association, present at a conference, and keep up with the profession.  These are all things I’m currently doing – volunteering for a few committees right now, I just recently presented at a conference and am thinking about doing it again this year, and I follow blogs, Twitter chats, Facebook groups and read a lot to keep up with what’s happening in the library world.

But there are also a couple of things on the list that I haven’t done – like being a mentor for someone else.  I’ve worked with a lot of librarians and although we never specifically called our relationship a mentor-mentee relationship, I definitely look up to them.  But, maybe being a mentor for someone else could be something I look into in the next year or so.  I’m also learning right now, that it’s okay to say “no.”  I’m currently doing a lot of volunteer work, so I want to finish a few commitments before I start saying yes to anything else.  The other idea I’m kind of looking into is a staff training day, now mine is more like a staff training hour to teach staff how and what to post to our social media accounts, but I think it’s definitely a step forward.  

One of my other professional goals this year is to create a curriculum for staff on common technology that is used in the library – online resources, basic computer help for patrons, etc. So, that’s an exciting and somewhat daunting project for the new year.  What ways are you going to become an even awesom-er library leader this year?