The Corporate Librarian

So I ponied up the money for a PDF of Primary Research Group’s 2007 edition of its Corporate Library Benchmarks study ($189 for print or PDF, $289 for a site license). I really encourage people to check out the study - this page lists the tables included, and you can find a summary of findings here. These are my initial thoughts:

• I really wish there were a methodology section.
• 45 libraries, most of them in the U.S., seems a small sample if they’re aiming for representativeness. Especially when they go on to make cuts by industry. Also, should MBA libraries really count as corporate?
• “Organizations that have decreased the overall amount of space devoted to libraries in the past two years still average a higher number of library locations than those organizations that are not trying to decrease space.” This intrigues me - if companies are trying to reduce space, why not close down locations? I wonder if this relates to embedding librarians in business units rather than having them grouped together?
• With respect to outsourcing, it would have been interesting to see current and historical data on offshoring generally, not just limited to China, India, Russia and developing countries. I freely admit to bias here
• “Overall, more libraries lost FTE positions over the past two years than gained FTE positions. 
  More than 30% of the libraries in the sample lost full time equivalent positions over the past
  three years, while 11.63% gained positions; more than 58% experienced no change in the
  number of FTE positions allocated to the library.” While the phrasing of the first sentence is accurate, another way of looking at it is “Overall, most libraries experienced no change in the number of FTE positions allocated to the library. More than 30% of the libraries lost….”
• It looks like finance and higher education have a lot of ready reference questions.
• Finance and pharmaceutical/medical companies are most likely to have their librarians participate in knowledge management programs.
• Corporate librarians really aren’t taking advantage of blogs and RSS. More likely to publish blogs after space has been cut, don’t spend much time reading them (which is admittedly understandable) and most don’t take advantage of the possibilities of RSS to disseminate information to executives.
• Wow, other corporate librarians travel a lot more than I did.

Other people’s comments and reactions to the study?

Sorry for the delay in posting - a combination of honestly not having much to say, sending my faithful laptop in for repairs (broken hinge and a peeling top case) and focusing on job stuff.After three interviews (two by phone, one in person), didn’t land the latest job I was hoping for. Another four resumes sent out, a phone interview sometime next month and slow progress on the consulting website (I’ll include a link when it’s finished).  I’m helping the local chapter of SLA with their websites - so far I’ve gotten the tour from the person currently in charge along with another chapter member, we have to figure out when to get together and we have to talk to the person currently handling content for the website. If everyone’s OK with my taking that on, a great way to network and I’m told that a lot of the jobs in the area are gotten by knowing someone.Next post will be on the latest edition of Primary Research’s Corporate Library Benchmarks, once I’ve had a chance to go through all 118 pages. God help me.

Since I hadn’t seen this come up on the AIIP or BUSLIB lists.

Thursday’s Wall Street Journal had an article on the 2nd Circuit Court’s scrapping of a 2005 settlement between database operators and free-lance writers over a class-action lawsuit on unauthorized reproduction of the writers’ works. The issue was District Judge George B. Michael’s lack of jurisdiction over most of the claims (which involved infringement of unregistered copyrights).

The full opinion is here, for those more up-to-date on the legal wherefores. The case got sent back to the district court, with the operators and free-lance writers having up to 14 days to seek a rehearing before the whole circuit if they want to challenge the ruling of the 2nd Circuit Court.

The settlement had divided plaintiffs’ claims into copyrights registered prior to infringement, copyrights registered after the infringement but before December 31, 2002 and copyrights which were either registered after December 31, 2002 or not registered at all.

The database operators were still deciding how to proceed at the time of the article - affected companies include Dow Jones & Company, the New York Times Company, Reed Elsevier Group PLC and Voyager Learning Company.

The Freelance Rights blog is also covering the story, with alternative links to the majority opinion, a dissenting opinion and a note on why the 2nd Circuit Court judges did not recuse themselves despite being class members themselves. Yes, it’s a blog by objectors to the original settlement. I’m not sure why there’s nothing readily apparent on the National Writers Union website - it’s certainly covered on the Authors Guild site.