The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Librarians

In the most recent edition of the ALL-SIS Newsletter, there is an article entitled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Librarians: What I Learned at the AALL Management and Leadership Institute. It is by Jennifer Lunt of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School Library in Lansing, Michigan.

By the way ALL-SIS stands for Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), ouch!

Anyway, in March 2007, thirty-five law librarians met in Arizona to explore what it means to be a manager and a leader of law libraries at what was billed as the first AALL Management and Leadership Institute.

Lunt explains:

"I would like to focus in this article on the specific topics that were covered during the Institute and the tools we acquired which will help us to become more effective librarians. In so doing, I would like to borrow from the best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey.1 In his book, Covey explains that highly effective people share seven basic character traits, or habits, which make them successful. These habits are progressive, and each succeeding habit builds upon the previous habits. For me, one of the real benefits of attending the Management and Leadership Institute was learning specific ways in which I could apply these habits to my career in law librarianship and my job as a managerial leader".

The 7 habits are:

• The Highly Effective Librarian is Proactive (The Habit of Personal Vision)
• The Highly Effective Librarian Begins with the End in Mind (The Habit of Personal Leadership)
• The Highly Effective Librarian Puts First Things First (The Habit of Personal Management)
• The Highly Effective Librarian Thinks Win-Win (The Habit of Interpersonal Leadership)
• The Highly Effective Librarian Seeks First to Understand, Then to be Understood (The Habit of Empathic Communication)
• The Highly Effective Librarian Synergizes (The Habit of Creative Cooperation)
• The Highly Effective Librarian Takes Time to Sharpen the Saw (The Habit of Renewal)