A Professional Photo of Academic Business Librarians Worldwide

Abstract

This article surveys academic business librarians throughout the world and explores similarities and differences among library managers and non-managers and U.S. and international librarians. Although the survey was originally designed to measure age and gender and ethnic diversity, it was expanded to include other demographic characteristic such as education and time in the field, current skills and future competencies, hiring patterns, and professional development. Survey results are compared with other existing demographic data and with previous surveys. Major results show that U.S. library managers are significantly older and more likely to be male than other groups in our survey.

Growing Your Own Leaders: Succession Planning in Libraries

“…Some of Pagell and Lusk's (2000) survey results shed some light. They asked how the current managers found out about and were hired for these positions.…”

“…Do midcareer, nonmanaging business librarians feel they are ready and willing to be promoted to leadership positions when the business managers retire? Again some of Pagell and Lusk's (2000) survey results give us some clues as they asked skill related questions. Interestingly, nonmanaging business librarians' self ratings for information skills did not deviate from managers' skills; however, there was a significant gap in management skills in two areas: human resource responsibilities and conflict resolution.…”

The MBA and Academic Business Librarians: More than Graduate Education for Subject Specialists

“…Concerning the number of academic business librarians who hold MBA degrees, Kendrick (1990) found that only 18.5% held that degree or a master's degree in economics, and similarly Winton's survey (1997) found that only 18.1% of respondents held the MBA degree. Pagell and Lusk (2000) found that 23.5% of the group sampled possessed the MBA or economics degree. Similarly, Liu and Allen (2001) found that 23.8% of academic business librarians possessed an MBA or master's degree in economics.…”

The Career Choices of Business Librarians: A Survey and Discussion

“…We first wanted to find out what types of librarians were taking the survey, so all respondents were asked to identify where they currently Kendrick (1990), Pagell and Lusk (2000), and Winston (1997)-surveyed only current academic business librarians. An online career survey conducted by Houdyshell, Robles, and Hua (1999) and published in the trade periodical Information Outlook did have a respondent pool similar to ours.…”