Building the Next Generation of Leaders: The NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program

Abstract

ABSTRACT With half of its directors planning to retire as part of the demographic transformation of the profession, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) undertook a leadership development program to encourage and prepare its future library directors. This article describes the association's multipart program in which each component can stand alone or as a sequence in preparation for a director position. It examines in detail one of the components, a successful mentoring program developed with support from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program. The authors describe the methodology and findings of a comprehensive qualitative evaluation study of the Leadership Fellows Program.