The Dysfunctional Library: Chal-lenges and Solutions to Workplace Relationships

摘要

28 In The Dysfunctional Library: Challenges and Solutions to Workplace Relationships, Jo Henry, Joe Eshleman, and Richard Moniz provide a comprehensive overview of the numerous destructive traits, behaviors, and attitudes that can plague even the most prestigious libraries. This collaboration represents a continuation of the authors' focus on leadership, management, and healthy work environments. This title could be seen as a complement to the authors' recent book (with Howard Slutzky and Lisa Moniz), The Mindful Librarian: Connecting the Practice of Mindfulness to Librarianship (2016). While The Mindful Librarian takes a deep look at the application of one technique to address the challenges faced by librarians, The Dysfunctional Library tackles challenges from all sides and offers a variety of solutions that could be applied in most library environments.29 Libraries are workplaces like any other, in many respects, and they are subject to the same issues found in any environment in which people must work closely together. Many of the concepts presented are drawn from psychology, communication theory, and leadership principles. The authors provide numerous examples, both imagined and culled from their robust survey of more than 4000 library workers, grounding theory with the reality of the changing library environment in the twenty-first century.