Changing Role of Senior Administrators, by Kathleen DeLong, Julie Garrison, and Marianne Ryan

Kathleen DeLong, Julie Garrison, and Marianne Ryan. Changing Role of Senior Administrators: A SPEC Kit. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 2012. 174 pages. ISBN 9781594078873.

In my last blog post I opened with a description of what SPEC Kits are; I will just add here that SPEC stands for "Systems and Procedures Exchange Center" and you can find more information about the entire series at http://publications.arl.org/SPEC_Kits.

Changing Role of Senior Administrators takes a look at how senior administrator positions have changed from 2007 to 2012. Only 46 member libraries responded to this survey, with a fairly low response rate of 37 percent. Their findings show that senior administrator titles are becoming more general, with less of an emphasis on specific areas of responsibility like public services or technical services. The tables on pages 18 through 29 demonstrate the changing positions and titles of senior administrators; tables on pages 35 through 51 show how those positions' responsibilities have changed and who their direct reports are.

The survey also addresses the 21st century skills that senior administrators must have, and indicates that these skills are acquired by attendance at professional institutes such as the ARL Research Library Leadership Fellows Program, the Frye Institute, or the Harvard Leadership Institute; reading professional literature, attending professional conferences, and networking. The survey also identifies desirable attributes of senior administrators, with "Changes/shapes library culture" at the top of the list, followed closely by "Functions in a political environment" and "Makes tough decisions."

Survey respondents indicate that they would be likely to redesign any senior administrator position, should a vacancy occur (79 percent), but only 45 percent expect to do so in the next one to three years. If there were a vacancy, they reported that they would expect the successful hire to come from another research library (91 percent), from within their own organization (67 percent), from another type of library (28 percent), or outside the library profession (19 percent).

This is an interesting snapshot of the current state of research library administrations and their viewpoints on how their administrations will change over the next few years.