The Corporate Librarian

I’ve been pretty busy with details of finishing up my job, looking for a new one, packing up my apartment, and so on. And next week, I’ll be flying off to South Africa to train my replacement. Johannesburg, for any South African readers wanting to meet up.

But I haven’t forgotten my readers!

A minor change to the About page - rather than give my e-mail address, I’ve replaced it with a comment form. So any questions or comments you have which don’t seem relevant to a specific post, feel free to drop them in there!

From a gentleman named Doug Strock, VP of Market Development for GLTac, Inc.:

“I represent GLTac, Inc., a language translation company based in Midland, Michigan. We will have a booth (451) at the SLA Info-Expo 2007 in Denver. I have a free pass that will allow someone admission to the exhibit floor for a single day. I would like to send you a copy (.pdf format) so that any librarian could attend if they are within easy travel distance of Denver. I work with many corporate librarians who request translation of the documents they find in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. back into English, as well as going from English to over 70 languages. Without exception the librarians are knowledgeable and friendly to work with, and I would just like to give someone a price break if they wanted to attend, but felt they couldn’t afford the cost of admission - on top of the gas it takes to get there!

 Here is the pass form.”

SLA Exhibit Floor Free Admission Pass

“All they would need to do is list GLTaC, Inc., booth 451 in the appropriate space as the “Received Pass From” company. They can include my name Doug Strock also if they prefer.

Hopefully this will allow someone to attend who otherwise wouldn’t.”

Two jobs I’m looking into involve knowledge management, so that’s as good an excuse as any to look into the relationship of knowledge management and research. Keep in mind, I’ve worked for consulting firms all my life, so I’d love to hear other people’s takes on these musings.

The first job I had, the same people were responsible for both knowledge management and research in theory. However, I often got push-back from the people who solely did research when I tried to grow my research skills. We charged back for our time on research requests - I don’t recall now whether we did or not for knowledge management activities.

At my current employer, Research is a separate function from Knowledge Management. This wasn’t always the case - when I was first hired, I’d search the company’s internal knowledge bases, help people contribute to them and manage the local library as well as calling associations and conducting searches on DIALOG, LexisNexis, etc.. Over time, Research became distinct from Knowledge Management. The two functions work together to solve client needs, and as a member of Research I work to see that deliverables are added to the firm’s internal knowledge base as appropriate, but there are some key differences. Research charges back for time. Knowledge Management doesn’t, I think. Research reports up to Strategy. Knowledge Management reports up to HR.

A few issues I’m thinking about as regards knowledge management and research:

• Who “owns” the customer? Established relationships with clients are valuable, so I’ve seen conflict over who is the single point of contact. Obviously, combining knowledge management and research eliminates this conflict (though there is still the potential for conflict with other corporate functions).
• Charging back for time. Honestly, I see it as a barrier to good client relationships - there’s a tension between projects wanting to maintain high margins and researchers wanting to maximize their billable hours. Also, do you want your clients thinking in terms of price, or value provided?
• Where knowledge management and research sit in the organization. Research reporting to Strategy gives it visibility with high-level executives and insulates it somewhat from the basilisk-like cost-cutting gaze often bestowed upon support functions. I’m a firm believer in the potential for knowledge management and research proactively surfacing issues for executives as well as promoting thought leadership.

Comments? Reactions?

I’ve been playing with Ning, which seems to have re-envisioned itself from “letting non-coders build programs” to “letting anyone build a social network.” I question the advantage of going with Ning over something like PeopleAggregator, say, but from what I understand it’s a work in process. Some weird design decisions - Why would I want to keep the same Ning ID across all my Ning communities? Why have a blog module rather than letting people import their blog entries from elsewhere? Why can’t I subscribe to individual forum threads in RSS? Nevertheless, you can make some interesting sites through incorporation of widgets - for a while, Bill Drew, the founder of Library20.ning.com, had a chat widget front-and-center, now replaced by a Google Calendar for the group. From what Bill says, Ning plans to add chat and wiki functionality, which would make it much more useful.

In an effort to let more people participate, I’ll either be launching a Ning site for Library Camp NYC once we’ve finally confirmed dates (a venue is definitely set - this will happen) or a PeopleAggregator site. That way, people attending in person as well as virtually can post on topics as well as seeing whatever media gets published (audio, photos, video). Bill’s been interviewed by Stephanie Vance for an article on how associations can use technology to engage members, which seems especially timely.

UPDATE: Realized you can import blogs using the RSS box. OK, one complaint gone.

UPDATE THE SECOND: Bill Drew says you can subscribe to individual forum threads via RSS.