Future Leaders

Join us during Libraries Week for the second Seminar in CILIP's #ChangingLives series. We are delighted to hear from Dr Buhle Mbambo-Thata, University Librarian at Thomas Mofolo Library, National University of Lesotho, as our Keynote Speaker, alongside lightning talks on the theme of future leaders in the Library, Information and Knowledge sector.

CILIP’s BAME Network are proud to host this second Changing Lives seminar, which will be chaired by Shirley Yearwood-Jackman.

The Changing Lives Seminar Series is a programme of free, virtual events celebrating innovation and thought leadership in the library, knowledge and information sector. Curated alongside CILIP’s Diversity Networks and Community, Diversity and Equality Group (CDEG), the Series invites ‘lightning talks’ from new and diverse voices in the library, information and knowledge sector and a keynote from an established professional. You can find more information at www.cilip.org.uk/changinglivesseminars

The Changing Lives Seminar Series are virtual events on Zoom with auto-captioning enabled for delegates to access.
The seminars will be recorded and made available on CILIP’s Vimeo Channel shortly after the live event.

The Changing Lives Seminar Series is kindly sponsored by the CILIP Community, Diversity & Equality Group.

Keynote: African knowledge systems and leadership: elements of sustainable leadership and diversity
Buhle Mbambo-Thata

Diversity in the workplace is encouraged in the 20th century. However, leadership literature tends to elevate post-industrial and western leadership ethos while giving lower profile to diverse leadership styles. Leadership norms that are mainstreamed tend to be western. Learning from the feminist theories of “women’s ways of knowing”, this paper posits that “African ways of knowing” propound team-work and sustainable leadership. Built around the African idioms and sayings on leadership and teams, the paper will explore African proverbs, as components of African knowledge system, that speak to leadership. The presentation explores several African sayings that speak to encouraging teams, working together and mentoring. It proposes that the sayings expound sustainable leadership. It further proposes that one’s cultures enrich their practice, and should be valued as legitimate leadership styles. The paper encourages acceptance of diverse leadership styles as enriching the leadership corpus, so that a variety of ways of knowing and doing can enrich future leadership practice. Drawing from own life experiences the speaker will further highlight that African leadership systems recognize strength of other roles players connoting strength in community.

The lightning talk speakers and talks are: 

How to empower future library advocates – and let the world know about it?
Gosia Cabaj

#EmergingInternationalVoices is a joint project of the Goethe-Institut and IFLA. Its long-term purpose is to establish an international network of young individuals engaged in library advocacy in their countries.

In September 2020 the Goethe-Institut has started an open call for young (under 35 years old) librarians interested in the topic of digital libraries and active in social media. The 22 chosen participants participated in a series of seminars and masterclasses with world class experts in the fields of digital libraries, user-centred-design, community building and advocacy and published their thoughts around the subject on a digital platform created for the project (goethe.de/EmergingInterationalVoices). After this initial phase, we asked the participants what they wanted out of the programme for the following year. Based on the responses, we asked them to design and conduct their own seminar as well as gave them opportunity to participate in a design sprint and present its outcomes during the IFLA World Library and Information Congress. The network will continue its activities 2022.

The talk will discuss the lessons learned from the project: which formats and methods worked in favour of creating the network, which didn’t and why connecting people across cultures and making it visible via social media is a powerful advocacy tool.

The future is challenging: Perceptions and Capability
Rebecca Dorsett

Leadership is often built on the premise of needing to be seen as aspirational and being inspiring to others to deliver outcomes, yet future leaders need to delve much deeper into truly understanding their workforce, and to be instrumental in creating a culture that truly celebrates and encourages the diversity of people. This involves breaking traditional stereotypes about having a template for a ‘standard worker’ and honestly embracing the differences in people to find real strength.

People are the true asset to any leader in any scale of organisation and thoughts around capability and future direction are more important than ever as organisations both big and small now evolve quicker than has ever been seen. The expectations of the workplace has now fundamentally changed and the culture of an organisation is more important than ever before.

This talk will discuss how to identify and challenge your own ‘standard worker’ stereotypes including the role of what a ‘leader’ is itself, the power of understanding capability and how it benefits both the organisation and the people themselves and the real role of a leader in creating and sustaining a truly diverse culture.

The Leadership Priorities of the ‘Covid Generation’
Luca Filippi

The Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns have generated endless articles and discussions on how the leaders of today need to adapt themselves and their teams to a new way of working. However, thoughts on how the pandemic has influenced those who are at the start of their careers (and will go on to become leaders) have been markedly absent from these discussions.

Drawing on personal experience, this lightning talk addresses how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted those in the early stages of their careers in the library and information sector – i.e. ‘the Covid Generation.’ This lightning talk will argue that future leaders will need to harness their skills as resilient individuals to adapt both themselves and their teams to changing events beyond the physical workspace. It will make clear the increased readiness that future leaders will have to engage and empathise with their employee’s personal circumstances to ensure their personal wellbeing and, by extension, the success of their organisation. Fundamentally, this talk will stress that this respect for the individual needs to be built upon existing equality, diversity, and inclusion considerations to enable future leaders to create a more inclusive workspace.

Lastly, this talk will address the need for future leaders to have a readiness to seek out digital solutions to facilitate remote and flexible working. This will take from my experience in introducing Microsoft Teams to the staff of a medium-sized medical library in order to allow them to collaborate remotely.

Emerging Literacies in the Library, Knowledge, and Information Profession
Dominique Garingan

In response to an increased presence of advanced technologies featuring artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in the information profession, this talk explores the concept of algorithmic literacy, a technological literacy that facilitates metacognitive practices surrounding the use of artificially intelligent systems and the principles that shape ethical and responsible user experiences. Algorithmic literacy is investigated from within the context of law librarianship and is framed as a literacy that emerging leaders in the library, knowledge, and information profession will need to meet evolving user needs. Within the context of law librarianship, this talk postulates that advanced legal technologies with AI capabilities must promote access to justice as well as ethical use alongside efficiency in legal practice. This is facilitated, in part, by legal information professionals fostering algorithmic and data literacy amongst legal information users. This talk discusses attempts to ground algorithmic literacy initiatives in existing information, digital, and computer literacy frameworks and notes the unique contextual factors that may be considered in the creation of an algorithmic literacy framework.

Leadership and The Changing Social Milieux
Arjun Sanyal

The current social milieux that we inhabit is changing fast given the myriad fast-paced radical transformations, particularly more so since the onset of the pandemic from the early part of 2020. In this maelstrom of changes, one thing which has stood the test of time is the fact that libraries are not only essential but also have a timeless appeal spanning boundaries and societies at large.

In fact, it has always been my firm conviction that librarianship as a profession is meant for those who wish to go through the baptism of fire. It brings out the hardboiled, clear-sighted and forward-looking leader in oneself who can not only rise to the occasion of one’s own accord but contemporaneously, leads by example to embolden others to work concertedly to accomplish the impossible within a trice.

In this talk session, I will expatiate upon the evolution of the idea of library leadership in changing circumstances, particularly against the backdrop of the pandemic. Alongside, I will also share my thoughts on how we can nurture future library leaders who can defy all odds to embolden his/her team towards unique solutions for innovative transformations. So, in this regard, I will underscore two aspects that form the nub of this talk- firstly, the idea of creation of a sui generis socio-informational milieu, predicated upon socio-digital innovations and secondly, how the conventional idea of leadership needs to be rethought and refined upon to motivate everyone within the team to make capital of their creative selves towards enhanced library productivity.

PKSB Subject Headings

This webinar supports the following PKSB headings:

• Ethics and Values
• Leadership, Advocacy, Influencing and Personal Effectiveness
  
  

Speakers:

Chair: Shirley Yearwood-Jackman

Shirley has had an extensive career, working primarily in Special Libraries and Higher Education. Currently, she is a Liaison Librarian at the University of Liverpool. She has also had an international career in the Caribbean, serving as Director, Regional Resource Centre, U.S. Embassy. During her career she has been actively involved in Library Associations serving as President of the Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL); Chair of the Local Organizing Committee for the ACURIL Conference, and a Regional Councillor of the Commonwealth Library Association (COMLA). Most recently, Shirley has been engaged in advancing equality policy at Liverpool as a member of the BAME network, the Equality Forum and the University’s Athena Swan Professional Services Self-Assessment team. She is currently a CILIP Trustee and Chair of the CILIP BAME Network.

Keynote: Dr Buhle Mbambo-Thata

Dr Buhle Mbambo-Thata is the University Librarian of the National University of Lesotho.

Dr Mbambo-Thata previously served as the Director- Resources Development of the African Library and Information Association and Institutions (AfLIA) 2017-2019; Executive Director, Library Services, University of South Africa, 2006-2016; University Librarian, University of Zimbabwe, 2001- 2006 and Senior Librarian, University of Botswana 1995-2001.

She serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), a member of the Board of Directors of the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), and African Journals Online (AJOL). She served two terms as Governing Board member of IFLA.

Dr Mbambo-Thata is a distinguished librarian whose knowledge and expertise were recognised when she was awarded the IFLA Medal for “Distinguished service to Libraries in Africa”. Her excellence in leadership was recognised at UNISA when she was awarded “the UNISA woman of the year” award as well as the “Vice Chancellor award for distinguished leadership”.

Gosia Cabaj is looking for ways to make culture and libraries a meaningful digital experience. She is currently employed as Head of Information Services Northwestern Europe Region at the Goethe-Institut and living in London. Prior to that that she worked in the headquarters of the Goethe-Institut in Munich (Germany) and was responsible for training development and digital project management. She studied Art History and Arts and Media Management in Lodz (Poland), Bonn and Hamburg (Germany).



Rebecca Dorsett is currently the Programme Delivery Lead for the Head of Digital and Information Professions Team in Ministry of Defence (MOD), a team that support all digital and information staff across Defence. Previously she has worked across defence organisations in HR Capability roles and as a Knowledge and Information Professional. She has also worked in a variety of different libraries including public and health. She is the current chair of the CILIP Government Information Group and passionate about the profession and helping people develop.

Luca Filippi is the Assistant Librarian at Surrey & Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust where he is involved in undertaking evidence searches and training users. In 2020 he graduated with an MSc in Information and Library Studies from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. While a student, Luca was involved in establishing the CILIPS Students and New Professionals Community, a group that aims to help those in the early part of their careers. Luca’s professional interests include career development and seeking to engage newly qualified professionals with health librarianship. He is currently working towards his CILIP Chartership.

Dominique Garingan is a law librarian based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from the University of Liverpool, specializing in technology and intellectual property law, and a Master of Science (MSc) from Northumbria University, specializing in information science and library management. Prior to joining the legal information profession, Dominique worked for the Calgary Public Library, University of Calgary, Legal Aid Society of Alberta, and Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench. Dominique is a member of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries and an editorial board member of the Canadian Law Library Review.



Arjun Sanyal is currently working as an Assistant Librarian at the Central University of Himachal Pradesh (CUHP), India and has a keen interest in collaborative international library projects. Arjun with his rich haul of experiences of over 5 years in the library and information sector, has built up a wide repertoire of skills to envision himself as a pro-active library professional who wants to make a difference in the ways people interact with information. Hence, it is Arjun’s consuming passion to rethink the utility of libraries as open-ended entities that can further the agenda of social justice globally.


This webinar is free and open to all. 

Register now