What Every Academic Library Leader Should Be Reading
Here are a few essential resources to help you stay informed on issues in the wider world that are likely to affect your library and your host institution.
One of the overwhelming things about being a manager or leader in an academic library is that the scope of things about which you really need to know something is vastly wider than your capacity for knowing things. It's easy to feel like you're constantly playing intellectual whack-a-mole: you realize that you need to understand network authentication better in order to keep your systems secure, and while you're learning about that you start hearing about something called "generative AI" that may or may not have significant implications for the future of library services. New publishing models are constantly bubbling up, and with them requests for various kinds of funding support from your library – how should you respond? Better get informed, as quickly as you can, about the ever-shifting economics of scholarly publishing. And while all of this is going on, you're also trying to deal with personnel issues, budget crises big and small, and "managing up" with your university administration.
And now, in the midst of all this, you have me telling you that there's a bunch of stuff you need to be reading. Great.