While I continue to look for work (interview next week), I try and stay in touch with the profession. Except that’s not as easy as it sounds.
SLA has the Annual Conference (June 2008, in Seattle) and Leadership Summit (January 2008, in Louisville). I have no idea when the next regional chapter meeting will be - I’ve volunteered to help with the website, to do more in the association and to meet more people, but that’s still largely up in the air. I don’t hear from the divisions or sections I’m in much, though I try to chip in on the IT Division’s Blogging Section blog and I made sure to meet Jill Hurst-Wahl at Internet Librarian. I’ve attended two conferences this year, which is more than many people get to, but it’s a big financial hit. I’m forced to carry a balance on my credit card, something I really hoped I’d never have to do.
Most of the big-name library blogs are for academic and public libraries, so I don’t really feel a part of the conversation there. Ditto for LSW on Meebo. Hell, this blog pretty much only gets comments from vendors wanting to push their products. At least Internet Librarian has sessions for corporate librarians, and I think a lot of Library 2.0 people could learn a lot from attending KMWorld & Intranets and learning from what’s gone on before.
Mailing lists? I’m on actKM, BUSLIB-L, the one for my SLA chapter and the one for AIIP members. I’ve chipped in on BUSLIB in the past, and may do so on AIIP if a topic comes up I feel comfortable with. But answering reference requests isn’t really what I’m after.
Where’s a venue for corporate librarians and knowledge management types to just hang out, talk shop and commiserate, regardless of geographic location on an informal basis?
November 28, 2007 at 10:49 pm
There’s the business librarians’ Ning group, though I am very much NOT enamored of Ning and I don’t see that it’s getting used often.
http://businesslibrarians.ning.com/
November 29, 2007 at 11:13 am
Perhaps we need to start our own? I take what I can from ActKM and the various library bloggers, but I’m in much the same boat. I’m going into my 6th month in a new job. I too am a special librarian that has morphed into more KMish activities.
November 30, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I didn’t realize that you are an AIIP member. I’ve never been to one of their conferneces. Have you?
I’ve been networking recently through Facebook and LinkedIn. I’m in the process now of contacting all of my LinkedIn contacts one-by-one. I figured I should try to keep in touch with them, so I know more about them and they know more about me.
I also network with a many non-librarians, since I see myself as a business person. Some of that happens face-to-face as well as online. Coffee, breakfast, lunch…whatever excuse works! One colleague and I occasionally do lunch. In December, we’re doing lunch and inviting two more people to join us as a way of expanding the circle.
mmm….I’m re-reading your post and you ask where to hang out with corporate librarians….where I’ve worked, there have been very few corporate librarians, so I maintained contact with them through BUSLIB. Given firewalls, etc., there may not be “one place” that is attracting corporate librarians online. A person to ask, though,might be Cindy Hill.
December 3, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I have also been looking for such a community which is how I stumbled upon this blog. I’ve also been using Facebook and LinkedIn. I’d love to join such a group on Facebook. I’ve joined a couple of the library related groups but would really like to connect with others in the corporate space specifically.
December 3, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Jill - No, just joined AIIP within the past few months. I’m dithering over which of four conferences to attend in 2008 - SLA , AIIP, Internet Librarian and KMWorld & Intranets.
I definitely should contact some of my LinkedIn contacts more, and when I first moved to California I offered to buy some people lunch and talk about the job market. That hasn’t come through, unfortunately.
Will definitely reach out to Cindy Hill, thanks!
December 26, 2007 at 4:07 am
Hi folks,
I am new to the corporate library world, having spent the last 15 years working in academic libraries. My new job is to build a specialized research library almost from scratch to serve 700 researchers worldwide. My boss is traveling next week to India to investigate the library services the company used up until hiring for this position. While library services were outsourced to India, our company has some relation with this “outsourced” library. This all has to do with a recent sale of a major subsidiary. Anyway, I have a lot of questions.
To start, I plan to join SLA and Computers in Libraries. Would any of you recommend other or different library associations to consider? Secondly, can corporate libraries offer electronic reserve services? Thirdly, I have a list of ten questions for my boss to take to India to see what we can learn about past services provided, and I wonder if any of you might have comments/advice regarding this list. I am attaching the list below and would greatly appreciate any guidance. In short, what types of questions would you have under similar circumstances?
1. How many reference/research questions did you receive from our research division per week, month or year?
2. What types of sources were used to answer these questions (print or electronic reference books, scientific databases, reports, standards, patent information, etc.). What were the most heavily used sources by our division?
3. Does the library maintain an intranet site for researchers ? If so, what were the most heavily used resources, tools or links to your knowledge? Did you keep web counts and do you have this data to share?
4. What percentage of all reference questions were from our division?
5. What was your average time for responding to reference questions for our division?
6. What percentage of questions could not be answered with sources you already subscribe to, but had to be purchased?
7. Did you provide interlibrary loan services for our division and if so to what extent?
8. Are there library vendors (publishers, translation services, etc.) that you have used in the past to support research for our division that you would recommend or recommend against?
9. Regarding translation services, how often was this service used by our division? What languages were mostly in need of translation and into what other languages?
10. As a corporate library, can you or have you put items on “electronic reserves” for ready access by multiple researchers? Because of copyright issues, are electronic reserves only available for non-profit organizations like academic libraries?
Thanks in advance.