Academic Library Succession Planning in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)

Abstract

In the last few decades, there have been multiple peer-reviewed articles that suggest academic libraries do not establish appropriate succession plans, nor do they develop the required leadership capacity in their librarians. This article discusses (a) the development of a survey instrument to measure the frequency with which succession planning activities take place in libraries, and (b) the results of a survey study that explored succession planning practices in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in the United States. This study utilized a cross-sectional design with a stratified random sample (n = 353) of academic librarians and administrators employed by ARL member libraries. After data analysis, validity and reliability analyses revealed the survey instrument demonstrates acceptable psychometric properties and produced a strong alpha coefficient of .91. Findings also suggest that several factors impact respondents’ knowledge of and/or participation in succession planning activities, including their sexual orientation, primary job duties, layers of management in their library hierarchy, and whether or not managers identify and prepare interims for critical positions in their library.

Keywords:

• Succession planning
• academic librarians
• survey research
• survey instrument validation
• ARL

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Drs. Fred Galloway and Lili Luo for their mentoring on survey research design, survey instrument validation, quantitative research, and data analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On July 1, 2020, the ALA Council combined LLAMA with two other divisions—the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) and the Library Information Technology Association (LITA), respectively—to create a new division called Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures (ALA, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.