Librarian of Fortune

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.

SLA's Alignment Project

I've been following the progress of the Special Libraries Association's "Alignment Project", in which SLA is taking an in-depth and strategic look at how both the association and its members are perceived, what their key value is, and how to communicate that value. What's making it difficult for members to grok is that the project is looking at two different questions:

* what is the key value SLA provides to its members, and what its role should be
and
* what is the key value that SLA members provide to their organization, and what their role should be

The proposal to change the name of SLA is driven from this project, but that's not all the project is about. There are some great insights in there for any info pro. Following are some of my key take-aways so far:

Huge discrepancies exist between what the C-suite values and what value we think we provide. Fascinating – 42% of info pros said their most valuable info role is “conducting research on users’ behalf”, vs. only 19% of users who considered that as the most valuable role. 28% of info pros said “managing a physical library”, vs. just 8% of users. Ditto for evaluating and purchasing content sources, staffing a reference desk, and document delivery -- a lot of us info pros believe that these are our most important contributions, but that's not what our funders value.

And what did users value more highly than we info pros did? Providing CI information, managing internal content, research staff working on project teams, managing a portal or intranet, integrating content into work processes -- all the really value-adding activities we do. These are all "librarian" responsibilities, properly considered, but they sure aren't what most people (including our bosses and the C-suite) think a librarian does.

Interestingly, across the board, the users identify and value the more strategic aspects of our service. We consistently value activities that are required but are not added value.

That's a lot of the value to me of the alignment project so far. It highlights the disconnect between what we think we contribute and what the C-suite values, and it shows the need for us to continue to focus more on adding value rather than on the administrative and search aspects of our profession. That's big stuff, and I'm glad that we have some tangible evidence of the messages we need to bring (and the actions we have to take) to be seen as the strategic assets we are.

The Kameny Papers

At the 2009 annual conference of the Special Libraries Association in Washington DC, the GLBT caucus brought in Charles Francis, a Washingtonian who is a friend of Frank Kameny, a founder of the modern gay movement for civil equality. Francis, apparently single-handedly, arranged to have Kameny's amazing collection of historical material and artifacts appraised, arranged for donors to pay Kameny for the collection (Kameny spent most of his adult life advocating for gay rights... not a lucrative career), and getting the material accepted by the Library of Congress. This project, the Kameny Papers is an amazing effort, even more so because it was spearheaded by one man who knew Kameny.

When the Library of Contress said they'd be interested in this amazing collection of historical material and artifacts from the early gay rights movement of the 1950s, they wrote to Francis:

Accurate history requires primary material created contemporaneously with the events under question. [...] Abstraction is often the enemy of historical understanding.  A comprehensive understanding of history requires that historians, and those who read history, see how government policies and public attitudes affected real individuals and how individuals reacted, adjusted, and grappled with their position. 

Check out the web site to see some of the correspondence Kameny had with various government agencies.

 

"This hurts me more than it hurts you"

I do a fair amount of strategic coaching with fellow info-entrepreneurs as well as corporate and specialized librarians, and one issue that frequently comes up is having to pull back from providing the level of information services that we want to provide. How so?

Early in my library career, the library budget was cut significantly. Our reaction was to cut back on staff, reduce the funding of professional development, and otherwise cannibalize our operation. Then I watched as Congress cut the Department of Interior's budget, which resulted in a severe reduction in the funds for the National Park Service, which is under Interior. How did the NPS react? By making Congress hurt. They very publicly closed the Washington Monument, with a sign directing unhappy tourists to the other end of the Mall, where members of Congress had their offices. It usually took no more than a few days of being flooded by unhappy constituents for Congress to rethink its spending priorities and restore the NPS budget.

I learned from that, and the next time the library budget was cut, the first thing I eliminated was the popular daily news digest. I announced to all the readers why it was being "suspended", and asked for their comments on whether this service should be re-funded. Sure enough, it didn't take long before I had the budget restored. It's not a pretty process, but neither is eating into the behind-the-scenes budget and not allowing library clients to see the impact of the lost funding. Instead, bringing all the library's stakeholders into the discussion ensured that the people who held the purse strings knew that we had a posse.

I just put this principle of "share the pain" into action again, but it was hard. I extensively edit a client's newsletter which she sends out to her key contacts. She recently had to cut my budget significantly and we agreed that I would do only a small amount of high-level editing instead of my full editing services. I still find myself tempted to just tweak the wording a little bit to make it clearer, or dig into the web sites of a company she is profiling, or just clean up this chart a little... Then I remind myself that, if she can't see a significant drop in the amount of editorial support I give, she will never bump me up to my original fee. So I sit on my hands as I read, now, and just keep reminding myself that the only way she will decide that my editorial skills are worth the added expense is to be without them.

Making the most out of a professional conference

The Special Libraries Association blog has a good piece on "tips for making the most out of an SLA conference". Most of the tips go beyond SLA -- they're useful in whatever professional development conference you attend.

Among the tips that I thought were most relevant (and most needed, IMO):

• Have at least two sessions chosen for every time slot. That way, if you get to one and the room is overflowing or the topic isn't what you thought it would be, you can make the most of your time by heading to your second choice.
• Try to attend a few sessions outside of your area or specialty.
• Bring 50-60 business cards. Be ready to distribute them to people who ask or who want to trade.
• At sessions, sit in the front so a speaker notices you. Don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions and be noticed. Network.
• When you attend a session, don’t sit with friends. Sit down and meet someone new on either side of you, since you never know where this will lead.

The tips were written by Special Libraries Association board members Ann Sweeney and Ruth Wolfish. Great job, Ann and Ruth!