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Leadership development is a significant issue in public libraries and library administrators debate, among other topics, how to achieve it for the middle-level manager. At the present time, library organizations use leadership and management workshops, seminars, and institutes to assist with managers’ organizational learning processes. Current literature indicates that additional strategies such as career planning, mentoring, networking, acquiring adequate qualifications and experience, professional involvement, and continuing education are used not only to facilitate middle-level managers’ career development, but also to help organizations fill the leadership gaps within their ranks.

The purpose of this paper is to identify competencies in common across public library managers.

The request for public library managers to participate in this survey was posted to the public listserve. Participants were asked about the tasks they do regularly, to identify the skills currently seen as most important in their work. They were then given a list of competencies, and asked to identify those they felt were most important for current public library managers, for those in future managers.

Some commonalities emerged, but there was not a substantial amount of overlap between skills identified by directors and non-director managers as important now or into the future.

Further research into managerial competencies focussed on specific job titles is necessary to see what kinds of skills each may value. Likewise, a broader look at public library managers may provide a better set of common competencies that will be useful for both training and hiring.

Understanding strategies for managerial competencies will be useful in building successful training programs.

Learning in this study that it will be challenging to carry out training relevant to all types of public library managers is useful; instead it can be tailored to different levels of managers for more success.

This is an original study, building on other work the author has carried out. The value is in understanding the real needs of managers, not just anecdotal stories.

This study investigates critical success factors which are impacting on the performance of NZ public library managers in generating extra revenue for their organisations. It identifies a number of ways in which the owning authority and the library manager/entrepreneur can increase the chances of success in raising revenue by non‐traditional means. It focuses on four main areas: organisational, characteristics of local government, characteristics of public libraries and library managers, and the external environment.

The purpose of the paper is to explore changes in Danish public library managers’ perception of the environment, their own knowledge about management methodologies and tools and their perceived need for further education.

The exploration of the changing attitudes and perceptions is based on two comprehensive and comparable surveys conducted in 2001 and 2004. The frame of reference is the very distinctive changes in the public library system due to a very innovative employment of the technology and the turbulent political and economic environment resulting from plans of merging the municipalities and counties into fewer units. Another important element in the context is the comprehensive effort to develop leadership capabilities in the library sector.

The paper finds some very distinctive changes in managers’ outlook and attitudes. The most important is probably the discovery of a more conscious and professional position in relation to the leadership role. The turbulent environment with the coming merging of municipalities creates some job insecurity but it does not tend to decrease the job satisfaction. The managers have undergone a process of professionalisation in relation to their job. A higher degree of professionalisation correlates with mental attitudes to the job, self‐esteem in relation to managerial tools and approaches and confidence in relation to the stakeholders. This process of professionalisation is tied to the comprehensive educational programmes run for managers in the library sector.

Of use to public library managers everywhere who have an interest in management methodologies and tools.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit a study that identifies the characteristics that contribute to perceptions by local politicians, library board members, library leaders and colleagues of what makes a public library branch manager “exemplary”.

The paper is an in‐depth study that draws upon a survey questionnaire and 120 interviews with multiple stakeholders, supervisors, peers and branch managers from two large public library systems in the Greater Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) area and peer members of the Ontario (Canada) Library Association. Branch managers also completed the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator assessment instrument for personality type and temperament profiling.

Survey results collectively described the exemplary branch manager as a flexible individual with best‐practice management know‐how and the emotional intelligence needed to motivate and bring others along. The exemplary branch manager has a strong tendency toward extraverted behaviors.

Knowledge can be leveraged to improve graduate school curriculum, career planning, recruitment, and staff training and development to enhance the effectiveness of public library branch managers as perceived by community and library leaders.

The paper provides perceptual, behavioral and psychometric evidence that incorporates perspectives of community leaders, colleagues and staff needed to identify core competencies for public library branch managers.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study concerning what emotional intelligence (EI) leadership attributes branch managers in the public library service in Northern Ireland (Libraries NI) consider to be most important.

The methodology in the study involved a survey of all branch managers in Libraries NI – an online questionnaire containing quantitative and qualitative questions was sent to 104 branch managers. Goleman's Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI) was used to examine what attributes and skills were considered to be more important.

The study found that while EI was a new concept to the majority of respondents, they were valuing and demonstrating EI attributes and traits in their work. The top five leadership attributes were: communication; teamwork and collaboration; adaptability; integrity/trustworthiness; and organisational awareness. Likert‐scale questions showed that being able to empathise with staff was considered to be important, and open‐ended questions demonstrated that the branch managers recognised the importance of self‐awareness and that recognising emotions in staff was an important management trait.

This study provides insight into the perceptions and practices of EI leadership within a public library setting and contributes to the research literature on the relevance of EI leadership for library management. It provides valuable comparative data for similar research undertaken elsewhere. Specific recommendations for further research into EI leadership and public libraries are also made.

The paper shows how the findings can be used to improve practice. Three specific frameworks are proposed which can be applied in the workplace: an Emotional Intelligence Leadership Skills Competency Framework for Branch Managers, which lists the personal and social competencies for branch managers in public libraries; suggestions for applying EI to leadership/management and staff development; and suggestions for applying EI to customer relations.

This study analyses for the first time EI leadership in a public library setting in Northern Ireland, and contributes to the emergent literature on EI and library leadership. The EI Leadership Skills Competency Framework for Branch Managers that is developed from this study can be applied, tested and used within and beyond the Northern Ireland public library setting in which it was conceived.

Public library issues are often described as being of low political priority. Yet circumstances differ for different communities; public library issues may receive varying political attention. The purpose of this paper is to study how Swedish public library managers describe local politicians’ attention to public library issues and to identify which municipal circumstances, such as political organization, population, and finances, seem to matter for how local politicians’ attention is described.

The empirical data were collected through a web-based questionnaire sent to all public library managers in Sweden. To identify the described political attention, a content analysis was done. A multinominal logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze the municipal circumstances that seem to matter for how political attention is described.

A small majority of public library managers described the local political attention as strong or quite strong. Three factors seem to matter for how the attention is described: political organization, existence of a library plan, and population size. In the discussion personal factors, such as the politicians’ personal interest and public library managers’ experience, are brought up as possibly being of considerable importance.

Several studies have been conducted on how politicians perceive public libraries; in these studies, the politicians are mainly treated as a unified group. This paper shows that the political approach to public library issues is described as different in different municipal circumstances.

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Australian public libraries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of management, planning and communication. The study also investigated operational approaches to the development and implementation of new and adapted models of service and resource delivery.

Utilising a multiple qualitative case study approach, interviews were conducted with 15 Australian public library staff members at three library services – one inner-city, one regional and one remote. Inductive thematic analysis was employed to generate insights into the operations and management strategies employed during the COVID-19 crisis.

Findings suggest that public library managers performed admirably in the face of significant logistical, budgetary and regulatory challenges. Five key themes emerged to represent the ways in which public library leaders responded effectively to the crisis: resourcefulness, flexibility, presence, sensitivity and communication. Results also demonstrate the importance placed on library users’ welfare.

This research represents the first study to focus on the response of Australian public library managers to the significant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify the strategies employed by library leaders to respond effectively. In doing so this research provides valuable insights into how public library managers can prepare for future crises.

The aim of this research is to display an applied and descriptive survey, assessing the feasibility of creating an inter‐library loan (ILL) system and document delivery services in public libraries of Fars Province (Iran).

The tool for gathering data in this study is a questionnaire distributed to 254 people from public library managers and librarians in Fars Province. Data analysis was performed with statistical software SPSS (version 16), using descriptive statistics and the Friedman test.

Based on the findings, 69.94 percent of research librarians and 95.9 percent of managers surveyed need to implement an inter‐library loan system. Activity of libraries in Fars Province in the field of ILL and document delivery library services was very low (5.73 percent). Research subjects indicated that the limitations and potential problems in implementation included: no guarantee that prevents damage to resources (97.3 percent), a lack of consistent rules using library services ILL (95 percent), a lack of funding for cooperation among libraries (92/1 percent), a lack of cooperation between public libraries in ILL library (91.3 percent), the high cost of cooperation among libraries, non‐credit provision for main organization (89.4 percent), a lack of equipment such as computers, scanners, copiers, and faxes (89 percent), a lack of librarians familiar with network technologies and databases (83.9 percent), a lack of trust among professionals in the field of librarianship and library document delivery services (80 percent), and a lack of coordination between the center and the library system for implementation (80 percent).

The paper offers recommendations which, if enacted, would lead to a much needed improvement to the ILL and document delivery services of public (and other libraries) in Fars Province.

Provides an overview of the main challenges which face public library managers in the near future as electronic networking of library services becomes more widespread. External influences on libraries deriving from the Information Society and the government’s agenda are considered. The problems public libraries are facing in traditional services such as falling issues of lending books are compounded by a growing skills gap, specifically related to IT. As well as new demands on libraries, there are new opportunities, such as digitisation of important collections and funding for technology infrastructure which managers must respond to. Change within the profession is the most important challenge facing managers who need to understand the differences between the old and new cultures. The major issues facing managers are explored: strategic, budgetary, co‐operation, structure, technical, staff and service issues. A short, concise checklist is provided for the fully networked manager as a guide for action