On Sibyl's Shoulders: Seeking Soul in Library Leadership

Citation

Alley, R. (2006), "On Sibyl's Shoulders: Seeking Soul in Library Leadership", Library Management, Vol. 27 No. 9, pp. 658-659. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435120610715581

What can we expect from a book whose title, On Sibyl's Shoulders: Seeking Soul in Library Leadership, refers to women seers, spirituality, and leadership, all in the context of librarianship?

Dr Donna Brockmeyer completed her education, leadership and policy doctorate on research of the Northern Exposure to Leadership, a leadership institute programme based in Canada primarily for the library profession. Currently, Dr Brockmeyer is the Library Director at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. On Sibyl's Shoulders explores leadership and developing library leaders. The book works as a primer on leadership with the first two chapters introducing soul and leadership writing and research. These chapters do not have a particularly library focus and several interesting areas are raised but left hanging, such as, alternative leadership, women's issues, and the difference between soul and spirit.

The highlight of this book is chapter three, which includes extracts from interviews with North American library leaders based on a variety of aspects including aspirations to lead, vision, courage, stewardship, values and energy. I found these excerpts universally relevant, illuminating, informative and helpful when reflected back against my own experiences. And I wanted more.

The fourth and largest chapter of the book is devoted to a description of leadership institutes in Canada and the USA. The chapter focuses on the experiences of attendees and seemed to indicate a lot of soul searching occurred, but for non‐participants it might seem a little overwrought. It is unclear how the institutes might be modelled by other countries and regions.

The final chapter, “Leading with Soul in the Workplace”, attempts to describe how we might encourage ourselves and our workplace to be more soulful. While it does begin to describe creative, spiritual and compassionate leadership goals, it lacks practical examples of how this might be done and doesn't clearly demonstrate what soul‐based actions might be.

For me, a non‐North American reader, perhaps from a more overtly secular society, the title of the book was very tantalising with the idea of soul and spirituality in the workplace being a very novel idea. I was looking forward to learning what this might be. As Dr Brockmeyer states “the concept of soul is an elusive and uncomfortable one for many” and I find that what soul in the workplace might mean, remains elusive at the conclusion of the book.

Overall, the academic style of the book had too many topics being explored and didn't provide enough active learning opportunities, tools and techniques to implement soul leadership in the workplace. Having said that, On Sibyl's Shoulders was a very easy read, the library leaders' comments candid and helpful, and the idea of soul in the work environment is worth pursuing in more detail.