Leadership Challenges Facing the UAE Academic Libraries during COVID-19: A Dyadic Perspective

Purpose – The purpose of the research is to explore library patrons' and leaders' perspectives regarding the key challenges facing during COVID-19 and issues to be addressed in managing libraries in the UAE. Design/methodology/approach– The researchers collected 300 patrons' and 50 library leaders' opinions by administering two types of questionnaires that tested its reliability and validity by implementing Cronbach Alpha and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) tests. The collected data were analyzed using the R language in R Studio Software. The selected hypotheses were tested by employing the Kruskal-Wallis (K-W) hypotheses technique. Findings – The researchers identified innumerable challenges the library leaders face during pandemic and stress in managing issues to be addressed because of the decreasing patrons' trend, which led to reduced budgets from higher educational institutions. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to collect the opinions of only higher educational institution respondents who are randomly selected from only two emirates Dubai and Sharjah. The study also collected a limited number of respondents with just three hundred library users and fifty library admin staff. Practical implications – The study is beneficial to all the types of libraries, its managers, the managerial cadre of higher educational institutions, and partially useful to all types of book publishers. Originality/value – The present research paper is original and provides empirical evidence about the UAE library leadership staff and patrons.