Librarian of Fortune

Plus ça change...

In 2003, I was asked to give a short talk at the Information Online 2003 conference in Sydney on the role of information professionals in the online environment. I predicted the day when we saw the distinction between librarY and librarIAN, when info pros permeated the workplace, when we were seen as an essential component of every information management function within organizations and institutions.

I re-discovered it when migrating to a new laptop and realized that almost all of what I said then applies just as much today. It's here, on my Extras page. What do you think? Besides the Microsoft Watch, which is now a smartphone, I think it's still applicable today.

I love my job

Reason # 5,882,401 for why I love my job: working with clients who get as geeked out about whatever they're working on as I do. Moisturizers, bathroom plumbing fixtures, pens - our obsession of the month gives us one more thing to bore people to tears with. It's a gift...

Are you a supermarket or a personal chef?

In my ongoing obsession with the need to add value to information services, I just wrote a newsletter item on the difference between "merely" doing great research (a great supermarket) and providing the client with distilled, actionable intelligence (a personal chef).

More thoughts on SLA name change

I think one of the underlying issues in the debate over SLA's proposed name change is whether or not affiliating with an association called "Special Libraries Association" helps or hinders our professional standing and, even more importantly, best ensures that we are -- and are seen as -- strategic players within our organization. Many people, like me, describe ourselves as librarians. However, for us to restrict the vision of our association to the members who have "librarian" as a job title is to preclude our association from reaching out and retaining members who are doing work that isn't within their organization's idea of "library" but which is in fact being responsible for thinking strategically about information and knowledge. 

To put it another way, I anticipate that soon we won't be able to describe ourselves as "Well, never mind my title, I'm actually a librarian". Our roles will have expanded to a point where they are no longer recognizable to people who associate the word "librarian" with people are really really good at finding information.

I think it's critical for our association to find words that better reflect all that we do. If nothing else, the existing name indicates we are an association of entities (Special Libraries) rather than an association of professionals, most of whom have an MLS or equivalent, and many of whom do not use the word "librarian" in their job description. For our association to continue to identify itself with entities rather than us professionals is to severely restrict what it can do for its members, many of whom are not, technically speaking, within a special library.

Thoughts on the SLA name change

As I read the comments about the proposed name change for the Special Libraries Association, I realize that the name implies something that many members may not want to hear. They don't want to be "strategic knowledge professionals" -- they want to be librarians, running their library, providing the best information services to clients. A name change like this forces them to think about having to really stretch themselves, or to be part of an association of people who don't focus primarily on "running a library."

Personally, I think that identifying ourselves as "librarians" is career-limiting. I sometimes call myself a librarian of fortune, but that's tongue-in-cheek. I know that I have to see myself as someone who looks strategically at my clients' information needs, who is able to provide added analysis to my research, and who is always staying on the leading edge of the information industry. I expect to drive my clients' expectations of what I can do; I'm not just responding to what they ask for. That's something that I believe we all have to do in order to successfully adapt to the new information environment.

I suspect that a lot of people are thinking, "I'm busy just keeping everything going - I don't have time to be strategic!"  If it turns out that most of our members simply aren't willing or interested in seeing themselves as strategic players, then we will know that one of the challenges we as an association will face will be to encourage members to get "the vision thing", as President GHW Bush used to say.

At the end of the day, I think that people's vote will be determined by how they see themselves and what their vision is of their role within their organization. I hope that people will look at themselves and their profession expansively, and will look at themselves as strategic assets within their organizations.

[additional thoughts in next blog post]

Making ourselves upwardly visible

I attended a meeting of the Rocky Mountain chapter of SLA last night, mainly so I could hear Gloria Zamora, SLA president, talk about the SLA Alignment Project. One of the pieces of advice Gloria offered was to get our deliverables in front of the CEO of our organization. And that got me thinking that what a lot of info pros deliver isn't fit for a CEO -- it's a lot of information but not a distillation or analysis.

Info pros can raise their profile by creating deliverable in a format the CEO would read. If we make it upwardly-forwardable, we make it possible for our brand to make it all the way to upper management and strategic decision-makers, regardless of who originally requested the information.

SLA's Alignment Project reality check

This posting on SLA's Alignment wiki is a nice summary of what SLA's Alignment Project is all about, and why it extends far beyond a possible name change.

I have been collecting some of the more thought-provoking ideas from the Alignment Project discussions. What strike me as the key take-aways are:

• We all need to articulate our value in language upper management can relate to, no matter where we work.  
• Our job is to talk with [upper management] about the solutions and support we offer and to align it with the organization's goals.
• We provide strategically important information, content and knowledge that make our organizations competitive and successful.
• If we do not stand up and state our value we cannot expect anyone else to do it for us.

Whew!

SLA Alignment Project results

SLA has posted a PPT file full of the best hits from the Alignment Project research. Here is where you can see, based on primary research, what words work to describe the value special librarians and info pros provide to their organizations.

It has two slides with great tips on what messages work best:
KNOWLEDGE SHARING
GLOBAL NETWORKING
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
BOTTOM-LINE BENEFITS

Check out the slide show for more details.

The "informational interview"

I just wrote the latest issue of my now-monthly e-newsletter for info-entrepreneurs. I looked at the "informational interview":

I learn far more from conversations when I do most of the listening than I do when I'm the one talking. Some of the most important times to be listening include when you are starting your business, when you realize that you need or want to make a change in your client base, and when you decide you want to explore a new industry. You can't make sound decisions until you learn about your prospective clients, and the most effective way to learn is to listen. I call these conversations "informational interviews" -- you are interviewing the other person just to learn about what informational pain points they have and what needs you can address. This isn't necessarily a marketing conversation; you are simply taking in new information.

The the rest of this is at my Info-Entrepreneur Tip of the Month page.

New DJ white paper: Pay Now or Pay Later

Dow Jones has put out a new ebook titled Pay Now or Pay Later: Exposing the Hidden Cost of "Free" Information". It's an update on a series of white papers on free vs. fee (which I collaborated on) and it takes a new approach which greatly improves over the formula I used in the past.

Yes, you could say it's self-serving, but I also think it addresses the recurring issue of how info pros demonstrate their value within their organization. See SLA's Alignment Project for more on this.