A Time for Change in Leadership

I read an interesting post at ACRLlog called Dissin’ the Director. The blogger made some points about what library directors and library staff could try to do to get along a little better. I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a good library director. It seems like sort of an impossible job, and I do think that the staff of most libraries don’t really understand what the job entails.

The blogger asked the question “Are we experiencing an unprecendented wave of out-of-touch, incompetent and power hungry library directors or are frontline library workers increasingly less respectful of the library administration than in the past?” I started thinking about this question again when I heard Chris Matthews, a political commentator, (yes, I’m obsessed with the presidential primary race) say that Hillary Clinton was losing because she had applied for George W. Bush’s job and the voters are not interested in someone new (even someone much more competent) as the President, they are interested in having a totally new job description for the position. Therefore, Clinton’s argument that she’s the candidate with the better resume is not carrying a lot of weight with the voters.

We can certainly argue whether or not that is an accurate assessment of the political climate, but I’m willing to say that he has a point. And I wonder if something like that is going on in libraries. Libraries, like the country, are living in a time of huge change. Because of the Internet and companies that have taken advantage of its capabilities, libraries now have a lot of competition in providing information to users. In order to compete and better serve our users, libraries need make some really big changes. It is possible that a lot of library directors are quite good at the traditional library director job. But maybe it’s time to rethink the position. I’m sure some libraries have already done this, but maybe ACRL should put together a group to make sure that library director position descriptions are really keeping up with the times.