Library Leadership Faced Numerous Challenges During the COVID-19 Pandemic

A Review of:Shaghaei, N., Knowles, C., Morley, F., Eveleigh, A., Casaldàliga, N., Nolin, E., Tatai, A., Cohen, M., Pronk, M., & Ghesquière, E. (2022). Library resilience and leadership in a global crisis. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of the Association of European Research Libraries, 32(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.10930
Objective – To investigate the experiences, perceptions, and principles put into action by library leaders during the COVID-19 crisis.
Design – Survey questionnaire.
Setting – European organization of research libraries webinar series.
Subjects – Webinar attendees and viewers of recorded webinar series.
Methods – In November 2020, the authors conducted two webinars titled “How are Research Libraries leading through COVID-19?” and “New challenges and leading into the post-
COVID Recovery for Research Libraries” for the fifth cohort of the LIBER Emerging Leaders’ Programme. The authors drew on their own experiences, addressing leadership in a time of crisis, the challenges of remote leadership, and how to create clarity, build resilience, and catalyze positive change. The webinars were shared with previous cohorts of the LIBER Emerging Leaders’ Programme. Following the webinars, a link to an online survey was emailed to attendees and previous Emerging Leaders, as well as shared on social media. The survey was anonymous, open for a total of 21 days, and included a cover letter that stated its purpose. There were nine survey questions, eight of which were open-ended. The survey questions were grouped into four webinar themes; communication, strategy, values, and changes made during the Covid-19 pandemic that library leaders would like to keep.
Main Results – The total number of respondents was 24; 84% were in leadership roles and 16% were employed as professional librarians. Respondents were asked if their library’s strategic goals were still broadly relevant and asked to provide examples for how their existing strategies influenced their research library’s responses to the coronavirus crisis. Of the respondents, 91% felt that their library’s strategic goals remained relevant during the coronavirus crisis. This was mainly due to the transformation to digitization (30%) and user-centered services (28%) that had occurred prior to the pandemic: digital resources, virtual training, the promotion of open access materials, more electronic books, digital services, and scan and deliver. Respondents reported more user-centered strategies such as new reservation systems for study places, computer loans, click-and-collect, and postal loan. Library values that were challenged during the pandemic were reported in the following categories: user-based (32%), collaboration (21%), social responsibility (21%), openness (16%), and collections or access (10%). Within the theme of communication, 41% described it as negative which was defined as difficult, challenging, insufficient, overwhelming, chaotic, bad, or erratic. Challenges of using online tools to communicate were described in categories of quality (24%), informal exchange (19%), time (21%), skills (17%), technical issues (9%), and leadership and personal issues (10%). The main challenges in communication related to not being able to interpret body language and non-verbal communication, lack of informal conversations or spontaneous interactions, increased time invested working, being permanently connected, difficulty acquiring the skills needed to use various tools, and the technological problems that exist when the network is interrupted. Advantages noted with online communication tools were efficiency and accessibility. When asked for examples of techniques or methods used to communicate with staff, most reported communication as formal (70%) using tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams Planner, Jamboard, and whiteboards, while 22% of respondents reported informal communication strategies such as coffee via zoom, video lunches, informal mails, and a reading club.
Conclusion – The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many challenges for research libraries that included maintaining strategic goals and values, communication, hybrid working, and flexible work schedules.