Librarian of Fortune

Preparing for your career or your business

I just read a great post from the SLA Future Ready 365 blog. In From Student to Professional: How I Became Future Read, Karly Szczepkowski talks about how a recent MLS graduate prepared for her career while still in school. Her perspective is equally applicable to anyone starting an info business. Highlights of the post:

* Gain relevant experience. [NB: I appreciate that she didn't say "how can I get experience if everyone wants experienced people?" Instead, she decided that she needed to gain skills and took responsibility for developing them.]

* Join a professional association. For Karly, it's SLA. For new business owners, it's the association their clients belong to.

* Create my personal brand. [NB: whether you're employed, self-employed, or not employed, you have a brand. Karly describes how she took ownership of her profile and found ways to demonstrate her unique value.]

 

Is an MLS still relevant?

I recently asked "Is an MLS Still Relevant?" in my ONLINE column. (Online, v. 34, n. 2 [March-April 2010], p.64) An MLS student recently emailed me some questions about that article. I'm curious as to what other thoughts you might have.

First is the quote from my article. Next is a question. Following that is my answer.

At a recent online conference, the head of a large corporate library told me that, as she reviews resumes for info pro positions, she counts an M.L.S. degree as a point against an applicant…

 This seems counter-intuitive. What was this library head’s reasoning for this stance?

Obviously, I can't speak for this person. I suspect that it was because many people with MLS degrees leave school with little experience working in special libraries, are not familiar with the need to market the library, don’t have much experience in the professional online services, and don’t have their heads around the idea of providing analysis to research.

This isn’t to say that current MLS grads don't have those skills, of course. Simply a statement that, for her, experiencing doing these things were more important than being taught the skills.

 

The better-paying jobs for M.L.S. graduates are those that require initiative, an innovative approach, and practical research and information management skills.

Would you please give me some examples of these better-paying jobs?

Corporate libraries often need info pros who are willing to take the initiative to create internal wikis, or to develop a new marketing strategies, or to develop webinars, or to provide analytical skills on top of research. Part of the skill set required in these jobs is the ability to identify an employer’s most pressing strategic needs are, and to figure out how your skills can address those needs. For example, are special libraries concerned about moving into social media? Then they’re looking for info pros who understand how to build a brand in the Web 2.0 space.

I wrote a newsletter issue on informational interviews, which may give you some ideas on how to learn what special librarians’ needs are.

 

“Unfortunately, many LIS programs are still graduating students who have no meaningful experience in using the professional online services, searching beyond the open web, or providing added value to their research.”

 What are some examples of commonly desired value added services for research?

The ability to work with the library client to learn what the information will be used for, and to then build a deliverable that enables the client to make a decision. Data visualization skills – to turn a statistical table into a more compelling chart or graph, to understand how to make numbers more understandable. Data-mining skills – to understand how to learn information about information. I also recommend running a simple search on the concept of added value in libraries for lots of other perspectives on this topic.

 

The ‘clients’ of the LIS programs' graduates want people who have a practical set of professional skills, a familiarity with new media and new technology, an appreciation for the need to tangibly demonstrate their value to their employer, and the basic skills in using the premium online services.

 What practical set of professional skills are these employers looking for?

In addition to what I described above, initiative to gather, analyze and summarize information; ability to market yourself and your library; familiarity with how to search social media and to use it for branding; skills in creating podcasts, webinars, charts and graphs, blogs, wikis, effective presentations, among other skills.

 

What are the main premium online services that MLS graduates seeking jobs with these employers should be skilled in?

Any two of Dialog, Factiva and LexisNexis. Or one of the three and a deep understanding of one of the library-oriented services such as EBSCOhost. You need -- in at least a couple of different "languages" -- to understand how to conduct effective searches in a minimal amount of time. That means thinking on your feet, understanding how to get the most out of each service, how to produce output that you can then incorporate into a report, and so on. It also means being able to do that kind of dance in a variety of online search systems and services. Ability to search the web is assumed; what employers care about is skill in using resources beyond the web.

 

What other thoughts do you have on what skills an MLS graduate needs?

SCIP re-brands

The board of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals has just changed the organization's name to Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

Given the drama last year about the proposed name change from Special Libraries Association to Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals, it's interesting to see how similar organization handled their rebranding.

 

WWMEBD, or, where's the info profession heading?

In April, I was invited by the SLA student members of the GSLIS program at Simmons College to host a conversation about where our profession is heading and how to position ourselves most effectively. I had a fabulous time, and met some LIS students who are going to be great assets to their employers.

You can listen to my presentation and the Q&A here. And yes, there were actually signs on the hallways pointing the way to WWMEBD. Obviously, it's time to start ordering wristbands...

See you at SLA!

I'll be giving several presentations at the 2010 SLA Annual Conference next week. I hope to see you there!

Brand You and Web 2.0
Monday, June 14, 2-3:30pm
Convention Center, La Louisiane Ballroom

Negotiating Up: Achieving Your Goals with Internal Clients Tuesday, June 15, 8:00-9:30am
Convention Center, La Louisiane Ballroom

Inherent Knowledge Sharing
Tuesday, June 15, noon-1:30pm
Convention Center, Room R07 (second floor)

Final thoughts on the proposed SLA name change

The more I talk with other SLA members, the more I am convinced that the new name, the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, is an important and - I believe - necessary step in SLA's evolution. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

• "Special Libraries Association" is the name of an organization of entities, in this case, "special libraries." Many of us are not in a special library per se, and in any event, membership in SLA is individual, not institutional. We aren't libraries, we're librarians and information professionals.

• The vote on the name change is not a vote on what any of us calls ourselves. I never refer to myself as a "special librarian" outside of SLA itself. Should the name change pass, I probably won't ever refer to myself as a "strategic knowledge professional" either. That's fine -- given the wide variety of job titles within SLA, it is both impossible and foolish to try to come up with a name that would serve as a job title. The name of the association is intended to describe what all of us have in common. Except for the organizational members of SLA, none of us is a "special library".

• The name SLA doesn't tell anyone what I really do and it certainly doesn't convey the strategic value I provide my clients. Explaining what "special" means usually involves explaining that (1) it's not the colloquial meaning of "special" as in developmentally challenged, (2) it refers to specialized libraries and (3) I have the skills and background from having worked in specialized libraries and I am using those skills outside the institution of a "library".

• For our profession to thrive, we have to continue to evolve to adjust to new situations. Our professional has, as a whole, successfully navigated the shoals of the explosion of content on the web (unlike some professions and businesses that may never recover from this, such as travel agents and, sadly, many independent book stores). Twenty years ago, we provided strategic value to our organizations by our use of fee-based online services and online catalogs. This no longer sets us apart as the clear value proposition we offer to our organizations; now, we have moved beyond "merely" offering high-quality information services to providing strategic support to facilitate the goals of our organizations. As we expand the perception and understanding of the value we provide, we must use a fresh vocabulary to reflect that change. Most of us do (and, IMO must) see ourselves as strategic assets to our organization. The new name reflects that larger, more strategic role we play.

• Over the past five years, I have seen a number of what we used to call "library schools" eschewing the L word in their very name. We now receive our graduate degrees from (and I'm reading from the list of ALA-accredited schools) the School of Information,  School of Education and Information Studies, School of Information Management, School of Information Studies, Graduate School of Science and Information Technology, Faculty of Information, and so on. When the institutions that build tomorrow's info pros aren't using the word Library in their names, it becomes clear that the word Library is not a  part of the name of our key organizations. I am proud to be a librarian, but I do not believe that it is a necessary part of my association's name any more than it is a necessary part of the name of the school that I got my graduate degree from.

For these reasons, I've voted YES for the name Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals.

Twapper Keeper - Archive and Organize Your Tweets

Just learned about Twapper Keeper from Gary Price. (Twapper... like Twitter trapper) The love child of Google and Twitter - all the archive of searching Twitter on Google (using site:twitter.com) plus the hash-tag feature of Twitter (Google strips off hash tags when it indexes tweets, so you can't limit your search just to hash tags).

See twapperkeeper.com/il2009 for tweets from the Internet Librarian 2009 conference, and twapperkeeper.com/slaname for all the discussion of the SLA name change.

And more thoughts about the proposed SLA name change

I appreciate Marcy Phelps' thoughtful approach about why she likes the proposed name, Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals. MarcyPhelps.com: ASKPro - Why I like it.

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]