The Dysfunctional Library: Challenges and Solutions to Workplace Relationships

Have you ever had an employee or co-worker who failed to contribute to the organization or played a role in creating a toxic work environment? Have you ever experienced uncivil or rude behavior from someone on your team? Dysfunctional workplace behavior happens everywhere including libraries. Handling these relationship-based issues successfully is critical to library success. Libraries can promote initiatives through collaboration and a team atmosphere in many forms such as planning programs and events, working with colleagues or faculty members, or forwarding the latest library project. However, all libraries experience dysfunction to some degree and often these attempts to meet library goals and move the library forward are derailed because of dysfunctional dynamics. This book provides practical insight into these forms of dysfunction and offers suggestions for handling it.Library managers today have a dual role as both manager and leader. Yet many librarians are put into managerial positions with little training on how to lead and even less training on how to handle dysfunctional employees and teams. This book would provide guidance and be a starting point for both new and experienced leaders handling dysfunction. The information would also be beneficial for library workers dealing with toxic co-workers.

About the Author :
Jo Henry is reference and instruction librarian at the Horry- Georgetown Technical College Library (Georgetown Campus), South Carolina. Previously she was a librarian at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and the information services librarian at South Piedmont Community College. She obtained her MLIS from the University of North Carolina Greensboro and a master's degree in public administration from Georgia Southern University. She has coauthored four books: Fundamentals for the Academic Liaison (2014), The Personal Librarian: Enhancing the Student Experience (2014), The Mindful Librarian (2016), and The Dysfunctional Library: Challenges and Solutions to Workplace Relationships (2017). Henry has presented at numerous library conferences and has co-facilitated library workshops (alongside Richard Moniz and Joe Eshleman) both online and in North Carolina and South Carolina. Joe Eshleman is senior librarian at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was previously the instruction librarian at the Johnson & Wales University Library- Charlotte from 2008 to 2015 and was head librarian for two years at the JWU Providence library. He received his MLIS degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2007. He has completed the Association of College & Research Libraries' Immersion Program, an intensive program of training and education for instruction librarians. Eshleman is a coauthor of Fundamentals for the Academic Liaison (2014), The Mindful Librarian (2016), and The Dysfunctional Library: Challenges and Solutions to Workplace Relationships (2017). He is also a coauthor of Librarians and Instructional Designers: Innovation and Collaboration (2016) and a contributor to The Personal Librarian: Enhancing the Student Experience (2014). He has presented at numerous conferences on instructional librarianship and other topics. Dr. Richard Moniz is the director of library services at the Horry-Georgetown Technical College, which has campuses in Conway, Georgetown, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He previously served as the director of library services for Johnson & Wales University's North Miami campus from 1997 to 2004 and was director of library services for Johnson & Wales University's Charlotte campus from 2004 to 2018. He is also an adjunct instructor for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's LIS program. In addition to publishing numerous articles, Moniz is the sole author of the textbook Practical and Effective Management of Libraries (2010) and the coauthor or coeditor of six other books: Fundamentals for the Academic Liaison (2014), The Personal Librarian: Enhancing the Student Experience (2014), The Mindful Librarian (2016), Librarians and Instructional Designers: Innovation and Collaboration (2016), The Dysfunctional Library: Challenges and Solutions to Workplace Relationships (2017), and Recipes for Mindfulness in Your Library (2019).