Women librarians as transformational leaders in the society in the 21st century: The Nigerian perspective

Abstract

Transformation is the ability to bring or make positive change in an organization or society. While leadership is the ability of an individual  or a group of individuals to influence and guide followers or other members of an organization. These two concepts work in paripassu.  Leadership involves making sound and difficult decisions, creating, articulating a clear vision, establishing goals and providing followers  with knowledge and tools necessary to achieve those goals. This study examines the women librarians as transformational leaders of the  society in the 21st century. Questionnaire based on modified 4 point Likert scale was used for data collection. Three hundred and twelve  (312) women librarians from different libraries in the women librarian platform were used for the population of the study. The study  investigates the respondents’ mode of managing and directing the affairs of their library in this 21st century information explosion opportunities and challenges. The data was analyzed using frequency tables, means scores and simple percentages and mean statistical  method. The findings showed that women librarians through transformational leadership strategies impacted impressively on their  clientele and the society at large; as they saw its importance, since it boosted their intellectuality, widened their horizons, improved  productivity and gave satisfactory services to the library clientele. The study concluded that transformational leadership by women  librarians helps to bring about new innovative and digitized way of rendering library services, build self-confidence, better ways of  packaging and extending library and information services in this internet era. It equally concludes that there are some factors  challenging these women librarians in their transformational ventures. Recommendations were proffered through