The Machiavellian Librarian: Winning Allies, Combating Budget Cuts, and Influencing Stakeholders

Citation

Maria Otero-Boisvert (2015), "The Machiavellian Librarian: Winning Allies, Combating Budget Cuts, and Influencing Stakeholders", Library Management, Vol. 36 No. 4/5, pp. 389-390. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-04-2015-0021

Content summary

The Machiavellian Librarian is comprised of a collection of essays written primarily by library practitioners. The book is built around a central unifying theme: what can librarians today learn from a 500-year-old book about war and politics? The Prince, written while the author, Niccolo Machiavelli, was in prison, contains advice to “young princes” looking to increase their influence and power. The emphasis is on “deception, cruelty, unfaithfulness, and whatever it takes to be a successful prince and stay in power and to keep the principality safe and secure” (Rubery, 2009 as quoted in “Introduction”). The challenge to the contributing authors was to find meaningful ways in which to apply the ancient principles of war craft to today’s library setting.

Scope and purpose

The 25 essays are grouped by the following categories: Part 1. Character and Behavior for Princes; Part 2. New Principalities; Part 3. Types of Armies; and Part 4. Political Situation. Some of the authors committed fully to the thematic challenge and found interesting and informative ways in which to apply the Machiavellian principles. Others, were content to treat it as colorful introductory material. The editors have done a good job of ensuring that each essay confirms to a uniform style and structure, making for a more enjoyable reading experience. Each ends with a series of recommendations which serve to summarize the main points of the essay.

Critical evaluation of the content

The reviewer found that the collection of essay, while interesting as a whole, was somewhat uneven in quality and content and would have benefitted from more aggressive editing. Maggie Farrell contributed a substantive piece entitled, “Princely planning in a political environment” (pp. 61-71). Her essay focusses on the advanced interpersonal skills required in order to navigate today’s political environments. She recommends the practice of developing collegial working relationships with key stakeholders in order to “positively influence stakeholders.” Ken Bolton’s essay, “Infiltrating the curriculum,” describes the process employed by the library faculty at Cornell University’s Nestle Library to create a credit bearing information literacy course. “It would take a tremendous amount of legwork and require the library to extend influence in the school at a level never attempted before” (pp. 107-115). Scott Scheidlower wrote on essay on the importance of communication as influence. In “Communicating with the ‘prince’ to win the war,” Scheidlower offers very practical tips for getting the attention of key decision makers such as the president and the provost and to make the best possible use of that attention (pp. 165-171).

Other essays seemed randomly chosen for inclusion in this collection. Bradford Lee Eden’s piece on “Visualizing library space for constituents” while interesting, fails to adjust to the thematic challenge of the collection (pp. 117-124). Leslie Morgan’s contribution, “Ambition, innovation, and tenacity” feels rather like a stream of consciousness free for all with little or no structure and tenuous ties to the theme (pp. 143-161).

Summary

This book is highly recommended for library collections serving library and information science programs. It will be most useful as a source for individual essays serving the specific needs of the researcher. Unless the reader has a deep interest in library leadership issues, not recommended for personal reading libraries.