As a professional community, librarians are interested in two related issues, increasing diversity in the profession and improving cross-cultural intelligence in preparation for the increasing globalization of the profession. This book begins a conversation about how to incorporate visible ethnic-minority immigrant librarians as leaders in the profession.
Leadership in Libraries represents a pioneering book-length work in a field that has been attempting to achieve diversity. Kumaran's voice provides much-needed perspective on some aspects of some experiences that ethnic-minority immigrant librarians have when faced with leadership opportunities or lack thereof. I qualify her voice because she speaks on behalf of and from the perspective of first generation visible ethnic-minority immigrants (henceforth immigrant librarians) from more socially conservative cultures who move to western countries as adults after completing some higher education abroad.
Speaking from her viewpoint as a first generation immigrant from India and having moved to Canada after her university education in India her perspective is strongly influenced by the specific circumstances of her immigration. The issues she spots are largely related to her experience, and inspired me as an immigrant from Trinidad to the USA, to begin to identify similar types of problems that are specific to my circumstances.
As a first generation visible ethnic-minority coming from a culture that is in many ways more liberal and more open to female leadership than the western country to which I immigrated after high school, my experiences at time diverge from the specific issues that she raises. Still, I am pleased that someone has begun the conversation about how to communicate with, hire, retain, mentor and promote immigrant librarians.
Kumaran's work is both brave and touching because she attempts to hold accountable both the librarian community and immigrant librarians for the cooperative roles they necessarily need to fulfill in order to ensure that immigrants do not enter the golden door of the librarianship profession only to find that they encounter a glass ceiling for which both groups are partially responsible.
Throughout the book, she attempts to use theories drawn from the fields of social science and business to analyze, explain and make recommendations regarding ways for immigrant librarians and their supervisors to change their behaviors and attitudes toward each other in order to facilitate the upward mobility of immigrant librarians into leadership positions.
Unfortunately, although Kumaran is well educated, with a Masters degree in English in addition to her MLIS, her lack of familiarity in the discourse of anthropology is evident. In writing this book, she moves out of her areas of expertise, with the result that, to someone, such as myself, with formal training in anthropology, her arguments are not entirely convincing.
She at times conflates culture with racial phenotype and assumes cultural homogeneity within national borders, she is inconsistent in her nomenclature and at times, she uses terms incorrectly, such as occasionally misusing the terms assimilation and acculturation. I noticed this specifically on page 166, where she writes “The focus of this training should be assimilation, not just socializing.” Based on the context, I think she meant to say, the focus should be acculturation, not just socialization.
In her attempt to describe a global phenomenon within the confines of a short book, she unavoidably paints with a broad brush. Significantly, her generalizations at times appear to devolve into the very stereotypes that one might assume that a book like this would dispel. For instance, she claims, on p. 86 that “[t]he American leadership style encourages a collaborative effort from all employees in an organization regardless of their positions and titles.”
In spite of these minor shortcomings in her description and the resultant limitations of her analysis, this is still a landmark publication because in it, she begins a conversation that should be regarded as a call-to-action to minority-immigrant librarians, anthropologist-librarians and librarians with formal education in business and management to lend their voices and their intellectual training to the cause of investigating and recommending ways to facilitate greater participation by immigrant librarians in leadership roles in the profession.
Kumaran's book both challenges and comforts me as an immigrant visible minority librarian. I am challenged to conduct a self-evaluation to determine how I can adapt to my chosen cultural community in order to achieve my career goals. I am comforted because she brings up the kinds of issues that we face that are often invisible to our colleagues and supervisors.
Kumaran addresses the invisible challenges such as miscommunications between people who ostensibly speak the same language, English, but who encounter unforeseeable misunderstandings because English words have different meanings and different pronunciations in different countries. Moreover, non-verbal communication, such as body language (including facial expressions), differs across cultures in ways that are unpredictable. She also points out the importance of being aware of and being able to adapt to cultures that favor direct or indirect communication when one's native culture employs a communication style that is in opposition to the communication style of preferred by patrons, colleagues and supervisors in the librarian's chosen country and city of residence.
Other invisible challenges stem from the fact that while immigrant librarians may acculturate linguistically and with regard to dress and copied mannerisms, these superficial similarities, can blind their colleagues and supervisors to the fact that they think differently. One example she gives is of polychronic cultures where time is viewed differently than in western cultures.
Although I respectfully disagree with some of the conclusions that she draws, I still believe that this is a valuable work that should be in every library collection because in a globalized world, all librarians should feel a moral impetus to familiarize themselves with the potential challenges facing minority librarians. This book provides an opportunity to begin that learning process, and those who read it, are better equipped to respond to what may amount to a human rights issue. If libraries are truly committed to diversity, this book should be part of every librarian's education.
Kumaran's work is a bold attempt to begin a difficult conversation about how immigrant librarians and the library community can begin to overcome some of the obstacles to ethnic-minority immigrant leadership in the profession.
Although one can and should use this book as a jumping off point for preliminary scholarly research in this area, the real strength of this book lies in it's ability to alert interested supervisors, peers and hiring entities, of important issues that should be considered when hiring, supervising, mentoring and working collaboratively with first generation immigrant visible ethnic-minority librarians, to ensure that immigrant librarians reach their full leadership potential for the good of both the immigrant librarians and the institutions that are lucky enough to have them.
This book may encourage supervisors to think about how they can best support the professional growth of minority librarians. It may be used as a starting point for difficult conversations that need to take place between immigrant librarians and their mentors and supervisors in order to facilitate meaningful communication about issues that impact immigrant librarian paths toward leadership and increasing responsibility.
Librarians who fall into categories traditionally described using words like minority or diverse may be drawn to this book. Kumaran writes for the immigrant minority audience, providing, at times, suggestions for minority librarians to successfully overcome specific known obstacles and become successful leaders. No doubt, members of this intended audience will see some aspects of their lives reflected in her text. To the extent that such librarians feel validated, encouraged and challenged by her words, this is a practical book.
Kumaran highlights the paucity of formal leadership programs tailored to the specific needs of immigrant librarians. This should serve as a call-to-action to professional librarian organizations to fill this gap and address the educational needs, not just of immigrant librarians, but of all visible minority librarians and their supervisors and colleagues.
Overall, the questions Kumaran raises are important and insightful. She acknowledges the often-overlooked daily struggles of some immigrant librarians with regard to assimilation, acculturation and challenges with cross-cultural communication (among other things). She melds this with a survey of leadership theory to produce an ambitious text that moves forward the conversation about diversity in the profession.
In a book of this scope, Kumaran necessarily generalizes in order to highlight the existence of deeply rooted cultural, historical, economic and psychological factors that impact first generation visual minority immigrant librarians pursuing leadership positions.
Although I do not always agree with her analysis, this is potentially a revolutionary work in which Kumaran attempts to shed light on issues that are at the heart of equality in librarianship and the retention of immigrant librarians. Ultimately, the reader is challenged to conduct further research and to draw their own conclusions with respect to how immigrant librarians maybe groomed for leadership.
