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The Morgan Library at Colorado State University in Fort Collins suffered catastrophic flooding as the result of a historic rain storm and flood that swept through the town on July 28, 1997. This study examines this single library's organizational disaster response and identifies the phenomena that the library's employees cited as their motivation for innovation.

Purpose – This study provides an example of a library where a pre-disaster and post-disaster organizational environment was supportive of experimentation. This influenced the employees’ capacity and motivation to create a new tool meant to solve a temporary need. Their invention, a service now called RapidILL, advanced the Morgan Library organization beyond disaster recovery and has become an effective and popular consortium of libraries.

Design/methodology/approach – This is an instrumental case study. This design was chosen to examine the issues in organizational learning that the single case of Morgan Library presents. The researcher interviewed employees who survived the 1997 flood and who worked in the library after the disaster. The interview results and a book written by staff members are the most important data that form the basis for this qualitative research.

The interviews were transcribed, and key phrases and information from both the interviews and the published book were isolated into themes for coding. The coding allowed the use of NVivo 7, a text analysis software, to search in employees’ stories for “feeling” words and themes about change, innovation, motivation, and mental models.

Three research questions for the study sought to learn how employees described their lived experience, how the disaster altered their mental models of change, and what factors in the disaster response experience promoted learning and innovation.

Findings – This study investigates how the disruptive forces of disaster can influence and promote organizational learning and foster innovation. Analysis of the data demonstrates how the library employees’ feelings of trust before and following a workplace disaster shifted their mental models of change. They felt empowered to act and assert their own ideas; they did not simply react to change acting upon them.

Emotions motivate adaptive actions, facilitating change. The library employees’ lived experiences and feelings influenced what they learned, how quickly they learned it, and how that learning contributed to their innovations after the disaster. The library's supervisory and administrative leaders encouraged staff members to try out new ideas. This approach invigorated staff members’ feelings of trust and motivated them to contribute their efforts and ideas. Feeling free to experiment, they tapped their creativity and provided adaptations and innovations.

Practical implications – A disaster imposes immediate and often unanticipated change upon people and organizations. A disaster response urgently demands that employees do things differently; it also may require that employees do different things.

Successful organizations must become adept at creating and implementing changes to remain relevant and effective in the environments in which they operate. They need to ensure that employees generate and test as many ideas as possible in order to maximize the opportunity to uncover the best new thinking. This applies to libraries as well as to any other organizations.

If library leaders understand the conditions under which employees are most motivated to let go of fear and alter the mental models they use to interpret their work world, it should be possible and desirable to re-create those conditions and improve the ability of their organizations to tap into employees’ talent, spur innovation, and generate meaningful change.

Social implications – Trust and opportunities for learning can be central to employees’ ability to embrace change as a positive state in which their creativity flourishes and contributes to the success of the organization. When leaders support experimentation, employees utilize and value their affective connections as much as their professional knowledge. Work environments that promote experimentation and trust are ones in which employees at any rank feel secure enough to propose and experiment with innovative services, products, or workflows.

Originality/value – The first of its kind to examine library organizations, this study offers direct evidence to show that organizational learning and progress flourish through a combination of positive affective experiences and experimentation. The study shows how mental models, organizational learning, and innovation may help employees create significantly effective organizational advances while under duress.

An original formula is presented in Fig. 1.

The paper's aim is to present findings of the recent evaluation of the Leading Modern Public Libraries development programme with reference to the management versus leadership dynamic. The programme provided a strategic intervention to address a perceived weakness in leadership development within the public library sector in England.

Drawing on recent examples from the literature, the theoretical differences between the concepts of management and leadership are discussed and used to inform consideration of the programme's effectiveness. Evaluation methods included participant observation, interviews, focus groups and a questionnaire survey, each administered at various stages of the programme with a representative sample of programme participants. Verbatim quotations from evaluation respondents are included in the analysis.

The research reveals that the programme has had a positive impact in enabling and developing leadership capacity within the sector, particularly in terms of developing participants' confidence and other interpersonal traits associated with effective leadership, including creativity and risk taking. Perceived benefits and limitations of the public library context in which the course was delivered have also been identified.

Important considerations on the transition from effective management to leadership, and the identification, support and development of future leaders within organisations are presented, with implications for current public library leaders, trainers and facilitators within the field.

The paper shows that the programme and its evaluation represent a strategic development initiative on an unprecedented scale in the public library sector.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on academic library leadership in the digital age. Primarily, the goals are to identify: first, the top five major challenges facing academic library leadership; second, the top five most important leadership skills required for effective academic library leadership; and finally, the top five best ways to develop these academic library leadership skills.

A survey was conducted to elicit responses from individuals who hold senior library leadership positions in American academic libraries throughout the USA. The participants were identified through several means: the web sites of the ALA and its divisions; the web sites of American universities; referrals; and the author’s professional contacts. To simplify the survey research process, e-mails including the survey research questions were sent to potential participants. In all, 38 invitations (n=38) were sent out to large and medium-size academic libraries throughout the USA. Over 36.8 percent (n=14) of the participants returned the survey. The participants represent a wide spectrum of libraries.

The top five major challenges are how to: demonstrate the library values to the university community, operate the library under fiscal uncertainty, retrofit outdated library facilities to accommodate new services, strike a balance between digital and print materials, and keep the library staff trained and current. The top five essential academic library leadership attributes are: vision, integrity, management skills, collaboration skills, and communication skills. The top five best ways to acquire these skills include the need to have mentors, to attend leadership development programs, to gain practical library leadership experience, to seek leadership roles, and to know oneself.

Research in this area is rather limited. As a result, this study will contribute to the academic library leadership literature and help current and aspiring academic library leaders worldwide with insightful leadership lessons needed to lead academic libraries successfully in this transformational era.

The concept of distributed leadership within library services is explored in this chapter. It focuses on how this model of leadership, which devolves leadership functions and practice widely throughout organizations, can lead to intra- and interorganizational collaboration as a catalyst for library service development and innovation. The chapter discusses the distributed leadership approach by presenting selected results of a study of team leaders in public and university library services in the East Midlands region of the United Kingdom. The study employed an online questionnaire and individual interviews with library team leaders to identify the level and nature of collaboration taking place in library services and also to ascertain the skills needed for successful partnership work. The interviews focused primarily on how and why collaborations occurred and it emerged that the team leaders had considerable autonomy to establish and participate in partnerships, fitting well within the distributed leadership paradigm. The chapter adds to, and augments the limited literature on distributed models of leadership in libraries by exploring how this approach works in practice. It also proposes and evidences a link between distributed leadership, collaborative working, and innovation. The authors suggest that distributed leadership can help library services innovate and lead service development by freeing up the creativity of employees through a less formal, hierarchical leadership approach. The chapter ends with propositions for a research agenda to establish the best conditions and most appropriate format of distributed leadership in library services.

This paper aims to explore the topic of leadership as perceived and described by public library leaders. In particular, the paper seeks to investigate the reported impact of public library leaders on their followers. The study aims to develop an understanding of the perceptions of current leaders in the field of public librarianship.

A total of 30 top‐level public librarians from Ireland, the UK, and the east coast of the USA were selected for inclusion in this study. A review of the relevant literature was used to design an interview guide which was used to conduct structured in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews.

The findings illustrate that the leaders believe that followers are motivated by example from their leaders. The interviewed librarians highlight the role played by followers, whom they see as the foundation of public library service. The librarians argue that a partnership approach between leaders and followers is necessary to formulate and to put into effect strategies and courses of action to fulfil organizational purpose and goals.

The current study is the most in‐depth study to date on this topic, drawing on face‐to‐face interviews with 30 public library leaders. Prior to this study, no in‐depth study on the topic of leadership in librarianship has been researched and published outside of North America. As this study was undertaken in three national jurisdictions – Ireland, UK, and the USA, it is also the first transnational study on the topic.

Marion has just taken on the directorship of a joint university/public library. You, as her protégé, are interested in observing how she approaches the new venture. You are curious about what information she will gather, whose advice she will seek, how she will figure out the expectations others have of her and the library, how she will prioritize the many challenges before her, and how she will negotiate her leadership role with the staff. In other words, you want to study Marion's organizational sensemaking.

This chapter illustrates two leadership theories – Heifetz’ (1994) theory of adaptive change, and Bridges and Mitchell’s (2000) theory of leading in transition – to illustrate their applicability to leading experienced staff through change. Using adult learning and followership theories as a conceptual framework, this case study illustrates an application of Heifetz’ (1994) and Bridges and Mitchell’s (2000) theories. Heifetz’ (1994) and Bridges and Mitchell’s (2004) leadership theories offer library leaders a framework for understanding, managing, and leading change efforts. The results in a case study approach are naturally subjective and may have limited generalizability to other library contexts. This study illustrates how library leaders may use established leadership theory to support experienced staff and guide change efforts. In using the adult learning and followership theory framework, the writer advocates for a humane approach to managing change with experienced staff. This chapter is original in its synthesis of three areas of theory in service of understanding leadership and change: adult learning, followership, and leadership. It is the first study to use Heifetz (1994) and Bridges and Mitchell (2000) in the context of library leadership.

This paper aims to design a model of succession planning process for public and academic libraries in Vietnam.

The model of library succession planning process was develop based on the findings of a two-phase research underpinned by transformational leadership theory. Data were collected from 172 responses of the online survey and 23 in-depth interviews in 13 public and 4 academic libraries in the Mekong region, Vietnam.

A library succession planning process with six steps was established.

As the research takes place in both public and academic libraries, the overarching benefit of the present study is to provide library leaders in these sectors with practical understanding and knowledge about how succession planning process can be done, as well as to enhance management practices in Vietnam libraries and other organisations. Leaders from other types of library systems in Vietnam and globally can reference this model so as to know what to do and how to conduct this process confidently.

This study helps to fill the gap that succession planning in Vietnamese libraries has been done without a specific path. Library leaders in each organisation conducted it differently between public and academic libraries because the government has only issued general guides for all industries of the nation.

The purpose of this paper is to argue the importance of succession planning within academic libraries backed up by original research documenting current succession planning practices.

A survey was completed by 34 ARL institutions, which included 25 questions regarding the ages of library leaders, hiring practices, and opinions about the importance and practice of specific succession planning principles. These results are compared with an extensive literature review.

The survey results show that there is a gap between the perceived importance of various principles of succession planning and how well the principles are practiced. In addition, the age demographics of library leaders clearly show a need to prepare future leaders.

From this research it was found that many libraries are not prepared to fill the vacancies of library leadership positions.

This original research provides data that may be lacking within the field in regards to the need for succession planning.

The purpose of the paper was to survey transformational leadership traits in three academic libraries in the Gauteng province in South Africa. The three academic libraries were chosen based on the fact that two of the universities were residential research-intensive universities and the third was an academic library of a distance learning university.

The study adopted a quantitative approach with a survey design in three academic libraries in the Gauteng province in South Africa in which a close-ended questionnaire yielded quantitative data. The study included 29 academic staff from the rank of assistant librarian to the director from the three academic libraries, as these are the personnel in leadership positions. To code and analyse, quantitative data from a Likert scale, SPSS version 25 was used. Cronbach's alpha was used to evaluate the instrument's reliability on the five constructs used in this study to determine readiness to adopt a transformational leadership style. The overall level of internal consistency exceeded the theoretical minimum of 70 percent. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to determine the normality of the data and the p values were greater than 0.05 (p > 0.05). Tables have been used to present descriptive and inferential statistics based on data.

Participants expressed favourable opinions about academic libraries' ability to learn from the best practices of others in the profession, with mean scores greater than 3.5 on a 5.0 scale. Participants' perceptions of transformative versus traditional management styles yielded a moderate mean score of 3.0, with moderate mean scores ranging from 2.8 to 3.3. The average score for talent identification and succession planning in academic libraries was 3.5. Perceptions of leadership responsibilities had a mean score of 4.1, with attributes on leadership responsibilities scoring at least 3.5. Perceptions of problems for the next generation of leaders in academic libraries were moderate, with a mean score of 3.2 on a scale of 5.0.

Only three of the seven public university libraries in the Gauteng province in South Africa were surveyed in this study. The sample size was reasonably small for generalizations beyond the South African Gauteng province academic libraries. However, it was felt useful for this particular case. A survey of all 26 South African public universities is required to assess transformational leadership traits in academic libraries.

Next-generation leaders in South African academic libraries are perceived as not being aggressive in terms of team building, coaching and motivating others.

In the wake of COVID-19, new leadership traits such as scenario planning are needed for academic libraries.

Leadership studies abound in the library and information studies (LIS) profession and they are not new. However, research on transformational leadership in South African libraries is still in its early stages. As a result, this study fills a gap in the literature on transformative leadership in academic libraries in South Africa.