Leadership and Social Justice

ABSTRACT

Leaders have tremendous influence not only in their organizations but for the profession and within the communities they serve. Librarianship has strong core values that are the foundation of our services but librarians also create an environment that supports diversity of opinions. How does a library leader balance social justice while serving the broad needs of a community? Is there an inherent conflict between personal perspectives and the encompassing multiple viewpoints? Library leaders may face difficult decisions in determining social justice issues within their libraries considering personal beliefs, institutional responsibilities, and community impacts. Every library leader has opportunities to address social justice issues within libraries and in so doing, will advance community goals of inclusiveness of all members.     

A Leader's Toolbelt

Leaders need a variety of tools to be effective in their management, communication, and leadership. These tools should be used for specific jobs and are operational in working with some personalities but not all. Leaders can develop these tools and over time, learn when and how to effectively use them. Such tools will enhance the leader's ability to address a variety of situations and issues drawing upon expertise gained through experience.     

Leadership Reflections: Extrovert and Introvert Leaders

Leadership calls for the ability to work well with people, communicate with stakeholders, participate in and lead meetings, and often public speaking. As a leader advances within an organization, expectations increase for the individual to engage with others as leaders spend more time working with colleagues and stakeholders to advance the organization. These expectations tend to favor extroverts in leadership roles but organizations may overlook the strengths of introverts as leaders losing out on the potential for effective management. An understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of personality types will help individuals as well as organizations in developing leadership in order to achieve organizational goals.     

The press, public knowledge and the grant maintained schools policy

This article examines as a critical case how newspapers reported the grant maintained schools policy. It argues that claims that press reporting of educational issues is frequently unfair are only partially substantiated. The quality press is more likely to be internally inconsistent and contradictory in its reportage of education policy and, on occasion, to inhibit debate through discourses of omision.     

The Emperor's old clothes

The purpose of this study was to examine one community‐based, interagency policy effort from two contrasting perspectives: critical theory (modernist) and postmodernist. To illustrate this juxtaposition we explored neighbourhood resident participation in community‐based interagency collaboration within the context of decentralization. Using qualitative methodology, we observed team meetings and interviewed participants. While community‐based interagency collaboration could be considered an ‘empowering’ strategy for community residents, from poststructural perspectives it could be a way to maintain the status quo. Through the analysis, we unpack this dichotomy of critical versus poststructural perspectives ‐empowerment versus the reinforcement of existing power relationships ‐ by suggesting that poststructural perspectives of power can flow between residents and agency team members. We deconstruct the assumption that such a policy initiative is either empowering or constraining by suggesting it could be both for all participants involved.

     

Eccentric subject,impossible object: A 1 poststructural reading of Hannah Cullwick

The paper explores poststructural figures of identity via a reading of a collection of texts by and about a Victorian maidservant, Hannah Cullwick. Drawing on Donna Haraway's figure of the trickster or shape changer and on the theorizing of the ''subaltern'' subject in postcolonial writing, the paper challenges readings of Hannah and her life that offer her up as an exemplary figure of suffering or heroic womanhood. Instead, it is proposed that Hannah can be seen as an ambivalent and transgressive figure of difference and in - between - ness . The paper gestures towards some implications for the handling of first-person narratives in qualitative research. The ''Hannah Cullwick'' texts include her diaries and those of her secret lover and, later, husband, an eminent barrister, together with the commentaries of their respective editors. Reference is also made to a photographic essay and to contemporary scholarly works about Hannah and her life.