Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians My good friend Diane D. at County College of Morris Library forwarded me an interesting article from today's Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled The Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians by Todd Gilman. It will be available at the above link free of charge for one week, after which you'll need to be a subscriber to view it.

The four traits that Gilman thinks "would not only make librarians more effective, but happier and more productive too" are:

Openness. Gilman suggests that it is extremely important to be open to all comments about how your library is run, even (especially?) those that are critical of your current policies and practices. He writes that by repeatedly ignoring evidence that shows we need to change, are librarians "hoping against hope -- trying to revive a dying loved one by wishing her back to life?"

I completely agree with him. If you want to be an effective librarian, you cannot stick your head in the sand like an ostrich and spend your time moaning about what it was like back in the old days, when librarians were automatically respected by all, and we didn't have to hustle for funds and we didn't have to deal with all these newfangled computers. Eh, you young whippersnappers, you don't know how hard we had it. Stone tablets were good enough for us then, and they should be good enough for you now.

Responsiveness. Once you've succeeded in being open to hearing what people have to say, what are you going to do about it? Gilman suggests that "responsiveness means taking appropriate action based on careful listening. Considering alternative models for delivering reference service would be an appropriate response to questions about the long-term viability of the traditional reference desk."

Collaboration. "No longer should the main library kick itself for continuing to struggle with a technical issue that the medical or law libraries resolved two years ago."

Oh, how Gilman's words are music to my ears. Collaborate with each other, people! Don't be shy -- share your best practices and ideas. Don't hide your light under a bushel. We can work together to solve problems that are common to us all. And for God's sake, don't be shy about sharing your ideas and knowledge - even if you think they're not "good enough." Good enough for what? Are we being graded on this? Please, I beg of you, don't make me reinvent the wheel if you have a perfectly good solution lying around at your library that you can share with me. That is one thing I love about library listservs -- I can throw a question out and hopefully get responses from dozens of other people who have input and experience on matters I know very little about.

Communication. "Ideally, all stakeholders should be consulted before a decision is made -- and their feedback should not only be taken seriously but be seen to be taken seriously."

Seems like a no-brainer to me, but I know that it's often hard to figure out the most effective way to communicate with all your stakeholders -- your staff, your board, your faculty, all your different groups of patrons -- if you're running around trying to put out fires all the time. I don't have an easy solution to the communication problem. But I do think that it is an issue that we must work on improving. There is always room for improvement, and the fact that our communication skills will never be "perfect" is no excuse to not try to get better.  ¶ posted by Mary Martin @ 1:45 PM