Shahira Khair was selected to participate in the 2022 British Library International Library Leaders Programme. The five-day summer course at the British Library in St. Pancreas was developed by the BL International Office and brings together early-to-mid career librarians from around the world to learn leadership skills.
Our physical spaces and our collections are means to an end, but it is what we do with them that defines true value. As libraries, we need to consider our social value, our impact on people’s lives, well being and satisfaction, as well as our more traditional measures and enduring values. – Shahira Khair, UVic Libraries
Delegates included librarians from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Netherlands, Slovakia, South Africa, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the USA; and included a mix of professions from academic, public, and museum/archives libraries.
As part of their training, all participants were asked to choose a “leadership challenge,” and Shahira focused on an Organizational Analysis program.Shahira notes that some of the program highlights that resonated with her included:
- The chance to step out from your own institutional and national context, understand broad challenges that cut across institutions and boarders, see issues through other lenses and learn from experiences and solutions of others.
- Learning about the BL’s strategic plan of “Living Knowledge,” which cuts across all of their programs, particularly their focus of living knowledge for everyone
- Thinking of their role in their community as good neighbours, have developed new programs for the community, are democratizing their reading rooms in a post-pandemic world where people want to reconnect
When communicating about library services, we need to speak the language of our audience, show examples of the best that libraries can do, framed in user language and needs
