On Thursday I step into another world for about 6 days, a world described by one former inhabitant as “tiring, envigorating [sic], fun, stressful, poignant, enlightening, challenging and more”

I’m going to be looking at leadership and am meant to come back a better leader in the library field. Wow!

I’m going to reflect a little in this post about what I think now about me and leadership. I know that in a few weeks, months or years, when I’ve finally worked out what Aurora was all about, it will be useful to have a record of “BEFORE”.

Do I consider myself a leader? A potential leader? Well…if I ‘ve applied for something like this, I must do. Surely? Maybe. I think the main attraction is the opportunity to network with other people who are as interested and enthused about what is happening in librarianship as I am. And a chance to drop everything and think about one thing for a week. And I love going on camps and doing group exercises (the words “girly swot”, not “potential leader” come to mind).

Do I have a vision which I can communicate to others? To be honest, not yet. I have an inkling that we need to work differently to remain relevant and to keep a place in our users’ hearts, and I do harp on about that a bit.

I definitely enjoy finding out what is new and showing it to other library folk, so they can work out what they can do with it. I also delight in learning from people who do the same. I don’t think I have the political savvy to influence people to change by persuasion – I’d prefer the thing I’m “selling” sold itself because it was useful, not because Kathryn got excited over it.

I don’t think Machiavellian is a word that springs to mind when people think of me. (Unless they can’t believe someone would just blurt out what she was thinking like I do – and that I must have carefully planned things and have some evil agenda for sometimes coming across as naive, slapdash and way too eager).

I know I’m good at asessing the hidden heirarchies in organizations. Who actually has power and gets things done, as opposed to who is meant to have power and meant to get things done. And the swirling interrelationships which means this can change from day to day. If I was more of a leader, however, I’d probably do more with that skill than just use it to direct students at the reference desk to the best person to solve their problem.

I know I don’t want to be a manager, but remain a practitioner. If I can’t fiddle with gadgets, or try to tweak something hands on, I think a lot of the rewards would go out of librarianship. And if I didn’t spend a proportion of my time directly dealing with our users and helping them solve their “small to others, but big to me” kinds of problems, I wouldn’t feel as useful. I wonder whether Aurora will persuade me that their are rewards for moving up the food chain and losing that contact with the ground?

I know I don’t want to work full time because then I won’t have time to stay current and would have no “spare time” to learn things that make me more useful in my job. And no time to chase library tech rainbows which may or may not be related to my job, or to remain unconcerned when they turn out to be useless or totally irrelevant. (Does that mean that I think that in my paid work I have to get it right first try and all the time? Hmmmmmm..)

Can I survive without seeing my kids for a week? I’ve not been away from them for more than 2 nights in over 9 years.

Can I survive with just 15 minute blocks of public internet terminal access at a time? Won’t my RSS feeds will pile up? Won’t I miss that crucial viral video and that new tool that has eveyone talking? Will those mysterious plants that I found last week growing through the floor of the Australian Libraries Building in Second Life come back again?

Will I stop blogging long enough to actually get my suitcase packed? Better get on with it. More action. Less talk. Lots of time for both next week.