Author ORCID Identifier

Simone Clunie : https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4708-3359

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

Spring 5-20-2024

Keywords

leadership, libraries, management, burnout, organizational behavior, staff, librarians

Abstract

Leadership is one of the most critical factors in the success or failure of an organization and can greatly impact the health and well-being of all participants, especially lower participants. (Kendrick, Kaetrena Davis, 2020). In Robert Greenleaf’s 1970 book, The Servant as Leader, he posits that a leader should be a servant first, seeking the health and development of all participants in an organization. This research project investigates the number of articles published in the periodical literature of librarianship about servant leadership, the nature of the coverage, and if servant leadership is being implemented in libraries as it was conceptualized by Greenleaf.

We posed the following questions in investigating the coverage in librarianship:

1. What is the origin of servant leadership?

2. When and where did the idea of servant leadership first appear in the library literature?

3. What is the nature of the coverage and how is it reported?

4. According to the periodical literature of librarianship is servant leadership being employed, and is it possible to detect a trend in the reporting of the past decades?

In our investigation, we used a bibliometric study employing content analysis techniques. Our sampling frame included: LISTA, Library Literature & Information Science Full Text, Library Literature & Information Science Retrospective (1905-1983), and Library and Information Science Collection with coverage from 1905-2023. For the content analysis, we used nine characteristics based on our four research questions to reflect the nature of the coverage in the periodical literature of librarianship about servant leadership.

There was a total of 20 articles on servant leadership in the library literature from 1980, when the first article was published, to 2023.

  • 40% of the articles, the highest percentage, were written between 2013 and 2018.
  • 25% of the articles, the highest percentage, were published in Library Leadership & Management, followed by Catholic Library World at 15%.
  • 85% of the articles were opinion pieces.

In conclusion, there have been very few articles written on the topic of servant leadership in the periodical literature of librarianship. Therefore, it would be important to try to find out why there are so few articles and to more fully explore the potential of servant leadership as a productive leadership style for library management and a way to influence the health and well-being of library staff.

Comments

This poster was presented at the CILIP/LAI 2024 Conference, Building for the Future, April 24-26, 2024, Canal Court Hotel, Newry, Northern Ireland.

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