It’s common for libraries to use visiting, interim, temporary, and acting roles to solve a variety of personnel vacancies. And with the current, widespread retirements and turnover at the most senior levels of library leadership, more and more libraries are being led by interim leaders.
Interim Leadership in Libraries: Building Relationships, Making Decisions, and Moving On draws on evidence-based research, professional expertise, and personal experience to address the practical implications that arise from the decision to appoint interim leaders. Authors from a variety of institutions who have served in many different interim roles explore this unique type of leadership in five thorough sections:
- Building Relationships for Interim Leaders
- Leading with Confidence
- Making Long-Term Decisions as an Interim Leader
- Leading Through Contraction: When No One Can Be Hired
- Moving On: When the Dust Settles
Chapters cover topics including serving as a non-librarian interim, leading through a hiring freeze, strategic planning and reorganization as interim, and developing future library leaders. Individuals asked to step into interim or acting leadership roles face personal and professional challenges. This book will help leaders, and those who work with them, learn from the successes and failures of others who came before them in order to have a lasting impact on their organization.
Jennifer E. Knievel (jennifer.knievel@colordo.edu) is a professor and lead of the Researcher & Engagement Team at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. She has held four interim leadership roles in her career, all at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she was the interim head of Reference & Instruction in 2005–2006. She also held two interim roles as associate dean of libraries and one as senior associate dean of libraries between 2016–2019. She has been in management positions since 2004.
Leslie J. Reynolds (leslie.reynolds@colorado.edu) is a professor and senior associate dean of libraries at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has held five interim leadership roles in her career. Her first full-time position was at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign as a visiting assistant engineering librarian. She served over two years as the interim associate dean for User Services at Texas A&M University. At the University of Colorado Boulder, she served as interim dean of libraries for a little over a year, spent six months as the interim dean of the Graduate School, and most recently served as the co-interim leader for the library’s Collection Strategies division. She has held library management positions since 2001.
