The Corporate Librarian

So, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but mucking out the Open Thread post brought it to mind again. I’ve generally been OK with people pitching their products/services as long as they’re a) library-related and b) open about it.

What is the preference of my readers? No product pitches ever? Product pitches are fine?

Apologies for the delays, I’ve been wrestling with putting together IKEA furniture and applying for jobs and whatnot. Anyway, if you haven’t seen the initial comments on Meredith Farkas’ survey of bibliobloggers (specifically, those identified as corporate librarians), click here.

The gender split for corporate librarian respondents is even, 50-50, which is different than the biblioblogger sample as a whole, which skews female (66.3% vs. 33.5%, with a 0.2% other).

Corporate librarian respondents tend to have their blogs slightly longer than the sample as a whole - 2 to 3 years for the majority of corporate librarian respondents, versus 13 months-2 years for the majority of the biblioblogger sample as a whole. This may tie in with the majority of corporate librarian respondents having had their jobs for 1-6 years. Most respondents (6/22) started blogging in 2006, with a fairly even spread between 2001 and 2007 (2-3 each year). Most respondents contribute to more than one blog (15/22). Corporate librarian respondents, unlike the biblioblogger sample as a whole, do not use LiveJournal, Movable Type, MySpace or Ning at all, and only one blogger used Typepad. Some of this may be down to relative ease of use or lack of awareness, some of it may be a perception that LiveJournal or MySpace are not “professional.” This is rampant speculation on my part, however.

Another big surprise is how few corporate librarian respondents blog anonymously - 2/22 (with 2 abstaining). Most corporate librarian respondents indicate that people at work know about their blog, with a sizeable portion (6/22) indicating that they are not sure. There is a fairly even split between first-time and repeat bloggers (11/22 versus 9/22).

Most respondents have personal single-author blogs (15/22), but sizeable numbers have single-author professional blogs (9/22), collaborative multiple-author professional or internal staff blogs (7/22), collaborative multiple-author personal blogs or official library blogs for patrons (5/22). The overwhelming reason corporate librarian respondents have blogs is to share ideas (13/22), with other top reasons being to record ideas for themselves/to keep current (9/22) or to network/to become part of a community (8/22). Surely I can’t be the only shameless self-promoter out there (OK, there are 2 others).

No corporate librarian respondents receive revenue from blogging. Many corporate librarian respondents have published in small-readership professional national or international publications (non-peer-reviewed) (7/22), and overall 15/22 respondents have published professionally.

They tend to read blog content via Web-based RSS aggregators (13/22). The distribution of how many blogs they follow is interesting:

• Less than 15 (4/22)
• 16-40 (2/22)
• 41-75 (1/22)
• 76-100 (5/22)
• 101-150 (0/22)
• 151-200 (2/22)
• 200+ (4/22)
• No response (2/22)

In terms of other social networking tools, corporate librarian respondents tend to use instant messaging (14/22), LinkedIn (13/22), Flickr (12/22) and wikis (10/22) - few use Twitter (3/22), Ning (5/22) or MySpace (4/22).

While most corporate librarian respondents have their MLS, very few have other advanced degrees (I suspect this is a key differentiator from academic librarians). Of the choices for types of work given, most corporate librarians deal with electronic resources (5/22) and are solo librarians (4/22). Beyond this, work activities range widely - the most common item was reference (2/22), but other choices include subject liaison (1/22), general tech services and cataloging (1/22 each) and web development (1/22). I’m very surprised to see no respondents citing circulation or acquisitions/collection development in their duties - thoughts on why this might be the case?

Most corporate librarian respondents (14/22) are not direct supervisors of others - I’d like to see how that changes over time and how it compares with other librarian populations. Is it that supervisors tend to be less comfortable with the technology or that they have less time, or both?

Corporate librarian respondents rate themselves highly in terms of openness to change (10/22 definitely, 9/22 pretty much), somewhat less in terms of tech-savvy (8/22 definitely, 8/22 pretty much, 3/22 somewhat), even lower in terms of leading innovation at work (7/22 definitely, 7/22 pretty much, 4/22 somewhat, 1/22 barely) and in terms of job satisfaction (7/22 somewhat, versus 6/22 for pretty much and definitely).

Obviously, it would be interesting to see how these results changed from 2005, or how law and medical librarians differ from corporate librarians. Other thoughts on analyses, or questions on these results?

I’m not inclined to look through results in an airport lounge, so real analysis will have to wait, but Meredith Farkas kindly sent on the results of her survey for just corporate librarians (excluding law and medical librarians, which were separate categories). Only 22 people identified themselves as corporate librarians, which compares pretty well with the 17 respondents to my survey. Respondents were evenly split between male and female, and an overwhelming number of respondents were between 31 and 40. I was surprised by the number of respondents from Western Europe and the UK, with most of the remainder being from various regions of the United States (none from the Northeastern United States, Southwestern United States, Northwestern United States or non-continental United States). Most respondents had their blog for 2-3 years. More reporting and some actual analysis later.