A New Post by Lorcan Dempsey and Karen Estlund: “The Technology Career Ladder”

From a New Post by Lorcan Dempsey and Karen Estlund:

In an exchange with Karen Estlund recently, she described how she had been asked by a search firm to compose a justification for a nominated colleague to explain why and how technology leadership was relevant to a library dean position. She noted that this attitude was consistent with her own experiences as a technology leader. And she could also see that colleagues with similar backgrounds were having similar issues as they applied for director or other leadership positions. Recruiters or university administrators did not always seem to see candidates with a technology background as having had the same preparation for leadership that their peers in other parts of the library had.

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Good leaders will be drawn from across the full range of the library, from technology, special collections, collections, public services or elsewhere. The technology career ladder in libraries should reach all the way to the top for suitable candidates. To imagine otherwise is counter-productively limiting.

Read the Complete Post (1841 words)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News