The Corporate Librarian

The Corporate Librarian worries sometimes about alienating his audience. Sure, it’s fun to post about various technologies and their potential applications, but judging from traffic reports that also seems to turn people off. Leaving aside the usual trends (traffic dropping over weekends, or, oh, say when one takes off several weeks from posting), this saddens the Corporate Librarian and he fears that he’ll start complaining to imaginary bartenders in no time. And nobody wants that.

So, while browsing through SLA’s website, the Corporate Librarian stumbled across a history of special libraries (PDF), excerpted from the writings of John Cotton Dana. Among his other achievements, Dana created the first business branch library. It’s interesting to read his thoughts on what made special libraries special - a new methodology for managing information resources which recognized that much information was ephemeral and could and should be discarded at some point. Other definitions suggest that what makes special libraries special is their focus on the needs of a specific group or organization. So we see a shift from methodology to clientele - not what we do, but who we serve. The SLA suggests a combination of the two:

Special librarians are information resource experts who collect, analyze, evaluate, package, and disseminate information to facilitate accurate decision-making in corporate, academic, and government settings.

The key part of that phrase is, it seems to the Corporate Librarian, “information resource experts.” After all, other information professionals “collect, analyze, evaluate, package and disseminate information.” Looking at Resources for Employers, we move back to methodology:

This is accomplished through the development, deployment, and management of information resources and services. Information professionals, working in non-traditional settings such as market research, business development, and strategic planning, use the Internet and other technology to present information in a way that maximizes its usefulness, saving time and money in order to attain the goals of their organization. Organizations that are integrating information professionals into strategic planning initiatives recognize their necessity in gaining a competitive advantage in the information and knowledge age.

A study conducted by SLA found that eighty-five percent of the companies ranked in the top 100 on the Fortune 500 list employed information professionals, compared to less than fifty percent of the companies ranked in the bottom 100. The Special Libraries Association represents thousands of information resource experts who are ready to put your organization over the top. What steps are you taking to differentiate your business from the next and maintain your company’s sustainability?

So the argument is that information professionals (note: not just librarians - CIOs, consultants and other “knowledge workers” are included) can provide actionable information and save time and money to boot, essentially. Interesting to note the focus on corporations - I wonder how all the art libraries, museums, etc. feel about this? Well, that’s probably one reason the vote on whether to change the name of the association to Information Professionals International back in 2003 didn’t quite make it.

The About Information Professional section gives the following examples of information professionals:

IPs include, but are not limited to, librarians, knowledge managers, chief information officers, web developers, information brokers, and consultants.

Now I know the SLA has an Information Technology Division with various sections, and Knowledge Management finally got to be a Division in its own right. Consulting is a section within the Leadership Division. But can my readers provide any insight as to how SLA works with other industry associations? How do we define our mission differently from theirs? What sort of issues come up in terms of competition?

In short, aside from other knowledge workers not necessarily wanting to take the time to do what we do (it would be difficult for a consultant to take on managing a physical library, for example), what makes us special now?

I first posted about the potential for a Library Camp in NYC on the BUSLIB-L list Saturday, October 21st. It’s now one week later, and 22 people have responded to my first survey. The power of mailing lists! I’m expecting more next week, since I posted to SLA-CNY mid-afternoon on Friday. By way of comparison, Library Camp East drew about 50 people. Respondents are largely from New York (mostly NYC, but some upstate as well).

I’ve got a mailing list set up for further updates (e-mail box (underscore) nine (at) ix (dot) netcom (dot) com if you want to be on it) and a friend investigating space for us (and helpful suggestions from others on backup location). So far, months have switched around somewhat with August being the favorite (12 out of 22 respondents), followed by March and July (11 respondents each). Conferences I’m aware of:

• ALA Midwinter Meeting (January 19-24, 2007)
• Library Camp East (February-ish)
• Code4Lib Conference (February 28-March 2)
• ASIST IA Summit (March 24-26, 2007)
• ACRL National Conference (March 29-April 1, 2007)
• SLA Annual Conference (June 3-6, 2007)
• ALA Annual Conference (June 21-27, 2007)
• ASIST Annual Meeting (October 18-25, 2007)
• Internet Librarian (October 29-31, 2007)

March has the advantage of lower hotel rates and being closer to the proposed dates of Library Camp East 2007. It’s also the month of spring break for Pratt students (March 10th-16th). August has the advantage of being a month many people are taking off anyway, and might be close to another Library Camp if one’s being held in September as it was last year. In terms of special guests, the top 3 are Jenny Levine (The Shifted Librarian), John Blyberg (founder of the first Library Camp) and Jessamyn West (librarian.net). I’ll invite a number of people once the date’s nailed down. Suggested themes are all over the place, though the Corporate Librarian is not unmoved by the suggestion of “raspberry pie.”

Good news: 16 people have responded to the survey on potential dates, guests and themes for Library Camp Mid-Atlantic here. So it seems there are enough interested people to move on to making arrangements with local hotels, nailing down a specific day and putting up pages on the Library 2.0 Wiki.

Not so good news: while the Corporate Librarian has received 8 e-mails he’s forwarded the survey link to, he’s seen 16 survey responses. Which means 8 people he doesn’t have a way of contacting about further updates, because he wasn’t clever enough to have a question collecting e-mail addresses in the original survey.

If you haven’t responded to the first survey and would be interested in attending a Library Camp, please fill out the first survey here and the second survey here. If you’ve already responded to the first survey, just fill out the second one. It’s even shorter!

Planning proceeds apace - Jeremy Hunsinger is kindly checking to see if space is available at Pratt Institute, and has posted about the event to two mailing lists he’s on. I will likely do the same on BUSLIB-L, assuming it’s OK with Dan Lester.

I’ve created a very brief survey for people who might be interested in attending:

Click here to take survey

Even if you’re not interested, please pass the information on to people who might be.

BUSLIB continues to unearth treasures, such as a 2004 study by Amy Hartson Davis (available here as a PDF) which demonstrates that corporate libraries have higher utilization rates if they eschew the term “library” in their names. Her sample was 56 Fortune 250 libraries, and utilization rate was calculated based on estimated annual requests divided by estimated number of employees served.

Established librarians and students, how do you feel about this?

In April of this year, the Ann Arbor District Library had a Library Camp unconference. In an unconference, the organizers provide meeting space, transportation, writing materials and general themes and the participants self-organize to discuss what they’re interested in within those constraints on a day-by-day basis.

It was so popular, the Darien Public Library in Darien, Connecticut held a Library Camp East in late September (which I found out about after the fact. Grr.).

Surely corporate librarians are as interested in technology as our academic and public brethren?

Would there be interest in organizing a Library Camp East Mid-Atlantic in the New York City metro area for 2007, for academic, corporate and public librarians?

If so, comment below and/or e-mail the Corporate Librarian at box [underscore] nine [at] ix [dot] netcom [dot] com.

You can see some sample agendas here and here.

UPDATE: Alan Gray of the Darien Public Library has e-mailed me that they’re almost certainly going to be organizing a Library Camp East for 2007. Therefore, I’ve retitled and edited the post accordingly - in all likelihood, I wouldn’t be planning this for before March 2007 at the earliest.

As usual, the Corporate Librarian is late to the party on this, but lately he’s been thinking about microformats. In plain English, microformats are a means of structuring data in a machine-readable open standard format using an extension to HTML called XHTML. The goal is to allow things like event listings, resumes and reviews to be parsed so that interesting applications can be built around them, like Emurse.com or Technorati’s Events Feed Service.

You can read all about microformats here, but the Corporate Librarian is interested in their application to libraries. Daniel Chudnov has been working with others on a bibliographic citation microformat, which could be the building-block of an open standards-based cataloging software. Check out a rudimentary example here. I believe (correct me if I’m wrong on this and I’ll edit the post accordingly) that Superpatron Ed Vielmetti kicked things off here.

Imagine a world where IT worked with librarians to develop microformat-based catalogs (or adopt existing ones), librarians notified patrons of training events which they could subscribe to using the hCalendar microformat, helped build expert networks using XFN and came up with microformats the Corporate Librarian hasn’t even thought of yet!

If you know HTML, you can pick up microformats easily enough - it’s not the same as being a hardcore coder. I really think this is an easy way librarians can:

• Build closer relationships with IT (whom I’d think would go nuts over the opportunity to work on something like this)
• Provide innovative services to patrons
• Raise awareness of librarians within their organizations

Thanks to Kerry Webb of the Australian Library and Information Association for the shout-out! And apologies for not posting in a while, but I honestly didn’t have any topics to discuss at the time. Feel free to e-mail me with questions or topics for future posts.

It’s not specifically a library-related resource, but I did come across a nice resume generator, Emurse.com. Not only can you generate a resume in the hResume microformat, you can syndicate it using RSS, conceal personal information, send resumes via e-mail and keep track of your resume-sending efforts.

Next post will be on microformats and why I think they’re of interest to librarians.

If you’re involved in providing business reference services, you really need to be on BUSLIB-L if you’re not already.

I thought I’d call out this question from the list, from Martha Rabin of VISA, since I know some people are interested in how to market library services.

We are in the process of packaging and marketing our products and
services. I am in need of unique, interesting and self-explanatory names
for some of the services we offer. For example, what do any of you call
“reference services” ? We have a service whereby we answer reference
questions and I am looking to call this something less library-like than
“Ready Reference”. In addition, we proactively create information which
folks can access on our intranet, right now I refer to this as
“Proactive Information Creation” quite a mouthful.

Have any of you done this kind of marketing of your services?