Author Archives: Rick Anderson

I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I work at Brigham Young University (BYU), the flagship university of the Church’s system of higher education. For the first 32 years of my career as a … Continue reading →

Hi, all — Well, it’s been a fun and interesting 14 months or so since I started Vision & Balance in October 2024. I started writing V&B with the idea that it could provide the service of letting other library … Continue reading →

Vision & Balance is on holiday-and-grandbaby break today. Hope you are too. (On break, at least.)

Let’s close out this eight-part series on Things Library Leaders Need to Do with an obvious one — but one that requires a bit more unpacking than it may typically get. All of us understand (though not all of us … Continue reading →

When you’re a library dean or director, a certain amount of spotlight will naturally be directed towards you. Being gracious and natural in the spotlight is, therefore, an important skill for library leaders, and I’ll go further and say that … Continue reading →

As many Vision & Balance readers know, library leadership isn’t my usual beat — most of my writing and speaking is on the topic of scholarly communication. And while I don’t usually use this platform to discuss those issues, I’m … Continue reading →

I fully realize that this entry in my eight-part series on what library leaders have to do is going to be a bit controversial — maybe the most controversial of the eight. So I’m going to explain as carefully as … Continue reading →

The third entry in my “Eight Things Every Library Leader Needs to Do” series is not so much a thing we need to do as a reality we need to accept. Let me explain where I’m coming from on this. It’s a common … Continue reading →

The fourth idea I want to address as an essential task of library leadership is really kind of a non-task: letting managers do the work of management. Now, I realize that this may seem like a trivially obvious prescription – … Continue reading →

There are many ways to be an ineffective leader. One of the most destructive is to ignore the wishes, input, and feelings of the people you lead, and simply push forward your own personal agenda by brute force. Most (though … Continue reading →