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The purpose of this case study was to explore senior librarians’ perceptions of successful leadership skills in the 21st century. The data gathered from 10 senior library leaders consisted of demographic information and responses to six open-ended interview questions. From the NVivo 10 analysis, several significant themes emerged regarding successful library leadership skills in the 21st century at two levels: foundational and interpersonal. At the foundational level, technical and knowledge skills form the building blocks for the next level of interpersonal skills. Persuasion and collaborative skills are interwoven with these interpersonal skills, both of which are at the core of the postindustrial paradigm of leadership. These two levels of skills, with an emphasis on persuasion skills, should form the basis of succession planning programs for next generation librarians. Implementing such programs could lead to increased leadership diversity, greater job satisfaction, improved job performance and effectiveness, all of which help retain librarians and ease staff shortages. Further studies are recommended.

The chapter seeks to address a current gap in the literature: envisioning and justifying community outreach projects and turning such insights into best practices for managing such projects. Drawing heavily on informational interviews, the article highlights the importance of defining shared missions and strategic plans, identifying partners, researching needs and expectations, building trust and partnerships, setting and fulfilling communication expectations, offering tangible benefits to the partner, and evaluating outcomes. While focused on health sciences librarians and their community partners, these practices are broadly applicable to many library outreach programs and can enhance credibility, approaches, and impact, while increasing funding opportunities and users while creating sustainable collaborations.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on factors that contribute to the successful development and use of the mobile digital library (DL). This aim will be achieved by reviewing selected journal articles on mobile DLs' successful development and use. This paper argues that the concept of DLs is evolving because of the dynamic nature of knowledge and technological developments in the infosphere.

A systematic literature search of journal article factors that contribute to the successful development and use of the mobile DL was accomplished by searching the following databases: Emerald insight, Science directory and Google Scholar. The systematic review was conducted following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines. This study applied Rogers's (1965) Diffusion of innovation theory to unpack the attributes of innovation to unpack contextual factors shaping African conceptions of mobile libraries (m-libraries). The studies reviewed were published from 2016 to 2021. This paper is based on a systematic literature review. This paper uses publicly available literature on the theme of DLs concerning m-libraries. Among the search terms used for the study were: “digital libraries”, “Africa and digital libraries”, “electronic libraries”, “information communication technologies”, “access to information” and “mobile digital libraries”.

Reviewed literature indicates that myriad factors can contribute positively or negatively to the successful development and use of the mobile DL. These factors include the degree of staff awareness and understanding of the potential of mobile technologies in enhancing the provision of library services, the availability of relevant digital content, library staff and users’ level of digital and information literacy competencies to navigate digital platforms, user friendliness of DL platforms, material and financial support to access m-libraries, power supply and access to internet connectivity.

The results from this study will generate knowledge and insight into the factors that affect the development and optimal use of mobile DLs to enhance and widen access to scholarly databases irrespective of time and space. This study will make recommendations that will enable South African policymakers to make informed decisions relating to the factors affecting the development and usage of mobile DLs for enhanced learning, teaching and education.

Given the growing number of scholarly publications on mobile DLs, this study seeks to discover how such technologies can help enhance learning, teaching and research in higher education. This study’s findings will provide a scientific basis for policymakers and researchers with evidence-based knowledge that raises the value of mobile DLs. It was discovered that if the identified factors are handled well, users can easily access tools, such as databases, electronic journals and online reference tools, and this could improve the quality of teaching and learning.

Purpose – Although not extensively documented, academic libraries in the United States of America have been involved in fund-raising for centuries. In more recent years, decreases in university budgets forced academic libraries to rely more heavily on philanthropy in order to operate or expand collections. However, much remains unknown about many aspects of academic library fund-raising. This study expands knowledge regarding library development efforts so that scholars and library administrators can better understand library fund-raising and become more successful in raising money.

Findings – Development work for academic libraries has shown to differ from other forms of development activities on a campus due to the fact that donors to academic libraries tend to differ from other kinds of donors on a campus. This research highlights strategies academic library development officers believe work in cultivating donors from a limited target population and how they believe this differs from or is similar to the work of other development officers in higher education.

Practical and social implications – This research sought to understand how organizational placement of the library development officer in the university has an impact on successful fund-raising.

Originality/value – This is the first research to directly study academic library development officers. This will help library administrators and those involved with academic library development efforts learn what library development officers believe works and doesn’t work in fund-raising.

The key to a successful library development and fundraising program is a synergistic relationship between development professionals and librarians. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this relationship.

The paper focuses on the partnership in achieving the library mission and its fundraising goals.

The study finds that raising funds for any academic library requires commitment and leadership of the library dean and the development officer. With library faculty and staff members' input, the library development team must work together in writing a compelling case statement that has high dramatic and emotional impact on the mission of the library and the institution.

The paper identifies three key elements that library faculty and staff can provide to support any successful library development program.

Success and effectiveness in automated library systems are two related issues that all users are normally looking for when buying or designing a new system. On the basis of the available literature and opinions of automated library systems experts, 26 factors were identified as criteria for the success of automated library systems. Attitudes to these criteria of Australian university librarians and systems managers were examined in a survey conducted in 1993; 23 of these criteria were approved by the survey sample, and the other three were rejected. These criteria should be tested with other groups of experts in library automation to gain more generalisation on the findings.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse managerial approaches of a selective group of national library directors, examining their views and perceptions of successful library leadership in the twenty-first century in different sociocultural contexts. This study was carried out based on a series of semi-structured interviews with ten top-level directors of national libraries located on different continents.

The data collection method for this study consisted of the narrative analysis of the ten interviews coupled with the participative leadership theory, which highlights the leaders’ desire to create a more democratic culture within their library organisations.

The analysis of these interviews reveals that many of the directors’ responses were supportive to the concepts discussed in participative leadership. National librarians, through their participative leadership philosophies, values and beliefs, contributed to the development of an institutional culture that fostered improving trust, communications, engagement as well as promotion of inter-team relationships by breaking down the traditional “hierarchical” barriers within their organisations.

The participants were predominantly from Europe; only one participant represented the USA, Middle East (Israel) and Northern Africa (Egypt). As a result, there are not many diverse viewpoints from national library directors outside of Europe. Further studies would be needed to obtain a more international perspective in the national library sphere. Furthermore, this study only examines the views and attitudes of ten different library directors. In comparison with the totality of national library directors across the world, this is a relatively small sample. This study may not be representative of all national library directors around the world.

The results of this study would be of interest to library professionals and educators interested in management, as well as Library and Information Science students who want to understand how national library directors view successful traits of participative leadership in different sociocultural contexts.

Public libraries will continue to be challenged by the presence of unattended children in the library as long as parents struggle to provide adequate childcare arrangements. This article discusses some typical library responses to the presence of unattended children and identifies elements that are shared by the most successful programs. Many libraries have found that offering programs for children is an excellent way to strengthen the relationship between the library and its community. In addition, innovative programs that encourage young library users provide an opportunity to foster a new generation of library users, which is critical if libraries are to survive as an institution in the coming years.

The purpose of this paper is to identify common arguments and points of resistance to library development projects, and to outline effective political and communication strategies, which can be used by library administrators and supporters when pursuing funding campaigns.

This study analyzed media messages from local newspaper and radio stations, including open comments posted in online discussion threads, over a one-year period. Interviews were also conducted with the library's director and foundation development officer.

Analysis of media coverage drew out primary points of resistance, while the interviews provided strategies utilized to counteract anti-library rhetoric.

Further comparison with other library funding campaigns is needed. Particular areas to be studied include the relationship between the tone of online discussion forum posts and actual voting results; also, the impact of strongly opinionated posters on other participants.

Library administrators seeking public support should strongly consider the following points which contributed to the success of the campaign analyzed in this article: The need to understand common public responses and points of resistance to proposed library projects. The importance of a supportive city council. The need to reduce uncertainty about potential physical locations. Understanding the distinction between political vs marketing campaigns. Identifying potential supporters, regardless of whether they were library users.

This study is important because in seeking public support for major projects, administrators must be prepared to counter common anti-library messages. Strategies undertaken in this campaign may be generalized to libraries of other types.

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of the specific roles information professionals have adopted in the past 14 years. It aims to identify the roles reported in the literature concerning developments in the Library and Information Science (LIS) profession.

This study adopted the method of systematic review. Searches were conducted in February and March 2014 on different LIS databases. From a total of 600 papers, 114 were selected, based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. A thorough full-text analysis of the papers revealed six roles that librarians have adopted: teachers, technology specialists, embedded librarians, information consultants, knowledge managers and subject librarians.

New and evolving roles were identified, mainly in the context of academic libraries. Librarians’ educational responsibilities and their active involvement in the learning and research process were highlighted in all role categories identified. Collaboration among faculty and librarians was reported as a way of ensuring successful instruction. Librarians’ personal views of their new and emerging roles were more frequently reported; further research is needed to shed light on academics, students and other users’ perceptions of librarians’ engagement in the learning process.

The study considered only peer-reviewed papers published between 2000 and 2014 in English. It focused on information professionals’ roles and not on librarians’ skills and their changing professional responsibilities.

This review paper considers the development of the LIS profession in a changing environment and offers an understanding of the future direction of the LIS profession.