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Belinda Boon is currently an Assistant Professor at Kent State University. Formerly, she was a Continuing Education Consultant with the Texas State Library and a small community library director. She earned an MLIS (1987) and PhD (2006) in Library and Information Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

In 2005, a qualitative study was undertaken to explore the educational events, personal experiences, and job circumstances that a selected group of non-MLS library directors working in small Texas communities believed were significant in contributing to their professional development. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 17 female library directors working in Texas communities with populations of 25,000 or less using open-ended questions, and interviews were recorded and transcribed for later analysis. Four major topic areas relating to the professionalization of non-MLS library directors were identified from the data: (1) job satisfaction, including library work as spiritual salvation, librarianship and the ethic of caring, making a difference in the community, and pride in professional identity; (2) professional development, including hiring narratives, continuing education and lifelong learning, mentoring and professional development, and the importance of the MLS degree; (3) challenges facing small community library directors, including gender-based discrimination, resistance from local governing officials, and geographic isolation; and (4) guidelines for success, including understanding the community, becoming part of the community, making the library the heart of the community, business and managerial skills, and people and customer service skills.

It is difficult for me to believe that this series has been around for a quarter of a century. But then it is hard to rationalize a belief that I am still a young man. As we begin the 26th volume of ALAO, it seems useful to consider the work that has come before. Twenty-five volumes of research studies and papers focused on library management and organizational issues may be a significant milestone for any monograph series in our profession, but it also represents an opportunity to step back, catch one's editorial breath, and take stock of near-term future directions. Clearly, some monograph series never see a 25th anniversary, while others have been pressed to change focus entirely. Yet others have become less-than-relevant to real-world professional challenges. For better or worse, this series has carried on, and, again, as one of our editors noted a few volumes back, offers the reader “an eclectic collection of papers that convey the results of the kind of research that managers need, mixing theory with a good dose of pragmatism.” Since the first volume in 1982, the aim has been to provide a publication venue for those manuscripts that are typically longer than most journal articles but shorter than most books. Moreover, the idea then as now was to relieve authors of the constraints that sometimes attend other genre and at the same time to encourage the presentation of thoughtful pieces that integrate theory and practice. Call me hidebound if you will, but as we offer Volume 26, I would argue that we have stayed true to our tradition of providing good research pieces that are worth reading.