The Corporate Librarian

The Corporate Librarian is holding back some, because he wants to get an article out of the whole experience, but some initial thoughts:

• Second Life seems to be tied to the model of “You have an office/store/some physical location you do business out of.” When posting a classified ad in-world, you have to associate it with an in-world location. Which seems curious, given a virtual world which allows for teleporting to people’s locations.
• The Corporate Librarian really needs to find a better way to advertise - after posting his classified ad he’s had 3 people teleport to his office when he wasn’t there and 1 look at his profile. No IMs (instant messages) inquiring about services or rates. The Corporate Librarian has bought a notecard giver, which gives notecards to avatars who touch the giver, and is trying it out as a business card dispenser in his office. He’ll see if this gets results.
• Starting a business would seem to be significantly cheaper in-world. The cost of an annual Factiva subscription? $69. The cost of starting a business so far in Second Life? $9.95 for a premium account (the Corporate Librarian wanted the option of buying land), plus $2 or so for the second week’s rent. All the other in-world costs (office space rental for the first week, office furniture, a notecard giver, posting a classified ad) were covered by the initial $1000 Linden stipend premium account members get for signing up.

The Corporate Librarian is going to poke around and see if there are any guides to marketing one’s business in Second Life.

Questions or comments?

Between job turmoil and dealing with the upcoming move, the Corporate Librarian hasn’t been able to deal properly with planning for Library Camp NYC. So, in January he asked someone who’d been energized about the whole affair if she could help, and I’m proud to say that Rachel Watstein stepped in to fill the gap.

It does look like a March Library Camp isn’t possible, given the lead time required to promote Library Camp, let people make travel plans, book hotels, etc., so right now August is more of a possibility.

Dates Rachel suggested working around:

• Jul 14 - Jul 17, 2007 - American Association of Law Libraries - New Orleans
• Jul 14 - Jul 17, 2007 - Church and Synagogue Library Association Conference - King of Prussia
• Jul 31 - Aug 02, 2007 - Linux World - San Francisco
• August 19 - August 23 2007 - IFLA - Durban, South Africa
• August 27-September 2, 2007 - Society of American Archivists - Chicago

The Corporate Librarian envisions a one-day affair, 9-5, people getting their own lunches, scheduled near a weekend so people get a chance to explore the city. Where we could use help from faithful readers:

• Sample pitch letters to venues, if you have any
• Advice on purchasing insurance, as several venues under consideration make this mandatory
• How to make arrangements with hotels (i.e., are any likely to give discounts for a group of 30-50 people?)

The Corporate Librarian really wants to make this work, even if he has to fly out from California to do so. He’s reached out to John Blyberg and Alan Gray to see what advice they have, as well. Once things are organized, we can put some pages up on the Library 2.0 Wiki so people who want to do their own local Library Camps can have a better idea of what’s involved.

The Corporate Librarian attended a Metaverse Meetup in Brooklyn tonight, and while his introverted tendencies got the best of him for the most part, he did talk to a wide range of people doing fascinating stuff in Second Life. In particular, while talking with Susan (avatar name Marvel Ousley), Business Editor for the Second Life News Network, it emerges that there are several outfits doing market research in Second Life.

• First Opinions Panel was set up by the Social Research Foundation to provide participants for studies by Fortune 500 companies
• Market Truths Limited is a New Zealand firm which does a wide variety of market research both within Second Life and in “First Life”
• Repères is a French firm which also operates in Second Life

I’m not sure how many people are doing a basic “Pull together information on X industry” using DIALOG or other online information services and creating a final deliverable in PowerPoint though, if any.

A belated but nonetheless sincere thanks to Alexandra at Sandia for the article she forwarded on collecting job listings in one’s RSS aggregator. The Corporate Librarian wants to note for the impressionable fledgling librarians out there that Monster.com is practically useless for finding jobs, as is Careerbuilder. He’s so annoyed with the sites he’s not even linking to them, not even with a nofollow.

Anyway, the Corporate Librarian made it back from Vermont (despite being deluged with 41 inches of snow, or 1.04 meters for the more cosmopolitan of you), and has begun following up on his job leads. He’s also ordered two books on information brokering, as we used to call it back in the day:

• Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional
• Super Searchers Make It On Their Own: Top Independent Information Professionals Share Their Secrets for Starting and Running a Research Business

Perhaps reviews are in order once the Corporate Librarian gets them. Any information brokers/independent information professionals following the blog with advice for people wanting to go the independent route?

The Corporate Librarian has decided to try an experiment, once he’s back from Vermont with high-speed Internet access. Initially, it will just be for a few months.

He’s going to try freelance research in the world of Second Life. If you’re not familiar with Second Life, it’s a virtual world in which you have a 3-D avatar and can explore various virtual goods and services.

Now there’s a region with lots of libraries already - Info Islands I & II. The various libraries have access to various free information sources. But they’re currently bound very much by "First Life" examples - limited hours, a "physical" building to navigate. The Corporate Librarian wants to see what else is possible.

How much will users of Second Life pay for answers to their questions by a professional researcher? Second Life time is the same as Pacific time, so the Corporate Librarian can pull a shift in the evening weekdays and longer shifts on weekends and see:

• What kind of questions people ask?
• How much they’re willing to pay for the answers.

Marketing - the Corporate Librarian can give his contact details to people he meets in-world, as well as posting a classified ad in-world as well. Plus, he can solicit referrals from clients.

Research sources - The Corporate Librarian can access DIALOG and LexisNexis from their websites - get a copy of The Encyclopedia of Associations and he’s golden.

Will the Corporate Librarian be able to cover the Second Life fees, converting his fees from Lindens (the currency of Second Life - 1 Linden is about 1/270th of a dollar) to US dollars? Will he be able to cover access fees for online information services? What is the IRS policy on taxing virtual currency?

Stay tuned for the answers to these and other questions.

Job-seekers (who hit my blog with gay abandon) might want to check out the first brief post I did on how I got my job, mainly for the comments to the entry.

To recap and expand:

• If possible, get an internship while still a student. This will make you stand out from less-experienced library school graduates.
• Library placement agencies are your friend - but don’t rely just on them, and keep in mind they get paid for placing you, so they might put pressure on you to take the first job that comes along.
• Network like mad. One thing my boss explained to me after the recent news was the concept of an informational interview. You’re not clasping your acquaintance’s knees in supplication and begging for a job, you’re talking with a friend (over lunch, say) about what their job is like. This gives you an idea of whether you might want a similar job. Make sure to get one other contact from informational interviews.

Be aware that the job search will take time, and don’t get discouraged if you get rejected by one outfit. A friend looking for an academic position tried to send out 1-2 resumes a day - it was a manageable volume and got him practice with his cover letter-writing skills. The Corporate Librarian’s first job took him months and months to get, after multiple interviews, applying with multiple library placement firms. It was a temp job, and when the firm moved operations to another state they realized the Corporate Librarian was already a good candidate for a permanent position, since I’d been doing the work for months already.

Right now, the Corporate Librarian has an Excel sheet set up, with columns for date, action taken, position applied for (if any), company (ditto), contact, result, and next action. I expect one could whip up something prettier in a database program - when the Corporate Librarian was laid off from his first job (not for performance, he hastens to reassure potential future employers), he custom-built a database in FileMaker. Which was free. Yes, this dates the Corporate Librarian.

Anyway, there are several purposes in doing this:

• It allows you to see you’re making daily progress.
• You have a set of contacts which will stand you in good stead for professional networking even after you have your job.

Any further suggestions the Corporate Librarian’s readers have for getting that first job out of school? Tips on networking? How to decide what sort of job to apply for? Post away!

The equally-mysterious A noted in comments to a prior entry:

I’d love to know how corporate libraries are using web2.0 technologies—a librarian work works for the govt.

For those of you who are hazy on the whole “What is a Web 2.0 technology” question, the Corporate Librarian can recommend no better source than Tim O’Reilly’s article.

It’s not a complete definition by any means, but in connection with Library 2.0 as placing the user explicitly at the center of designing and implementing new products and services, one can think of Web 2.0 as doing the same for various software products and services. Examples might include Flickr, social bookmarking sites, social networking sites, wikis.

You could stretch the point and include things such as IM (which the Corporate Librarian’s firm uses regularly), but that’s probably pushing it.

So, the Corporate Librarian tosses the question up to his readers. Which Web 2.0 technologies are you using in a corporate environment? What have the challenges been? What have been key success factors?

The Corporate Librarian found out this week that his position is being eliminated the end of April, so expect a detailed post on job hunting once he comes back from vacation on the 20th. Marvel as he navigates the internal job posting database! Gasp as he arranges informational interviews!

To A: So far, the Corporate Librarian’s fellow librarians haven’t been using Web 2.0 technologies, unless one counts the Corporate Librarian’s posting of the occasional photo from team events to Flickr. He’d like to know about other corporate librarians’ use of Web 2.0 technologies as well, so he’s creating an open thread on the topic.

To Carolyne: The Corporate Librarian has been lucky dealing with IT so far, but we’ll see what happens once he starts making crazy wild-eyed suggestions about improving the team’s Sharepoint site. One issue that’s come up regarding the possibility of obtaining a feed of customized data from a vendor is “Who’s funding the server?,” but that’s not strictly an IT issue.

To David: Now promoting libraries in a corporate setting is something the Corporate Librarian can and will post about, probably next week Internet access permitting. The motel the Corporate Librarian is staying at claims to have some manner of Wi-Fi Internet access, and if that doesn’t work the Corporate Librarian’s friend’s workplace has some manner of Wi-Fi, as does the public library there. The other topics, the Corporate Librarian doesn’t have experience with, but suggests contacting John Blyberg of the Ann Arbor Public Library, who’s done some amazing stuff. Here’s his blog entry on their dynamic recommendation system.

To Shaunna: The Corporate Librarian had honestly never heard of grey literature before, but will see if he can find out more about locating and cataloging grey literature in the legal profession.

So, faithful readers of the Corporate Librarian, what topics would you like to see me discuss next? ‘Cause honestly, right now I got nothin’.