Assistant Professor Pimrumpai Premsmit, D.A. introduced an academic work under the topic “Leadership in Thai University Libraries: The University Directors‘ Perspectives” at the conference “The 7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education & Practice (A-LIEP 2016)” at Nanjing, The People’s Republic of China on November 4, 2016.
A-LIEP Conference is one of the most important conferences in Asia-Pacific in 2016, which used the conference topic of “Innovation in Library & Information Science in the Age of Big Data” by dividing the conference into 3 parts 1) Library and Information Science (LIS) Research 2) LIS Education and 3) LIS Practice. Assistant Professor Pimrumpai Premsmit, D.A. academic work was placed in LIS Practice group.
This presentation is a research result which studies tertiary education’s library leadership through the point of view of the director of the library.
Summary
Background. The Thai university libraries have to cope with changes resulting from technology advancement and socio-economic conditions. Leadership is the key to manage the change and to move the library forward.
Objective. This study aims to investigate the university library leadership from the directors’ Perspectives on leadership activities, roles and responsibilities, qualities, core competencies, and competency development needs of library leaders.
Methods. Qualitative data from the interviews with nine university library directors were collected. The interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis.
Results. Results indicate that the most important leader activity is attending university functions to remind other university administrators of the existence of library and its significant role in the university community; the most important quality is having the integrity; and the the most important role and responsibility is change management. The core competencies that the library directors perceived most important are directing, resolving conflict, commitment, and teamwork. The directors also identify their strengths as library leaders which include being assertive yet polite, winning the hearts and minds of the library staff, having management experience, being patient, having teams, and being friendly and approachable. The directors indicate the need for competency development, in terms of, being able to negotiate with stakeholders, having ICT and language skills, being able to engage in networking to gain knowledge on library management.
Contributions. The perception of the library directors can give an insight into what constitutes the library leader and what makes the library successful in this time of change. The library directors’ need for competency development can be used for preparing and recruiting the next generation of library leaders.