Assessing the Experiences of Autistic Academic Librarians in Positions of Leadership

This paper looks at Autistic academic librarians occupying leadership positions and how being Autistic affects their leadership capacity. Through analyzing five different interviews I conducted, I found that being Autistic posed challenges to adopting these roles by making it difficult to deal with a lack of control and master informal social skills. At the same time, being Autistic also proved beneficial by providing interviewees with greater emotional intelligence and the capacity to communicate directly with others in the library. I conclude this paper by talking about additional paths of inquiry related to Autism and leadership in the academic library environment.