The blog I’m very, very behind in writing anything for, the SLA-IT Blogging Section blog, has notes by Nicole Engard on a career panel at the annual SLA Conference (which I sorely wish I was attending). One interesting quote from Susan Klopper, which mirrors what I’ve found out here:
If you want to work in a library in a corporation - i would strongly recommend you don’t do that because they don’t exist anymore.
Oh, there are still jobs, but they’re not library jobs for the most part. Read Nicole’s post to learn more.
June 17, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Not true! My library in a major corporation is not just still “there” but thriving with more staff than many academic libraries I know of. And the number of staff has grown, not shrunk. Of course the difference is that could change in a heartbeat but I don’t think it will.
June 17, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I think the larger point Susan and Sylvia were making was that pitching yourself as a librarian or even an information professional and expecting a traditional job of cataloging and DIALOG searches is not necessarily the way to go. I don’t know the specifics of your employer, obviously.
Maybe it’s a regional thing - but I know that in the Bay Area the advice I get from placement agencies and fellow SLA members is that traditional corporate library jobs are going away.
I welcome further discussion.
June 23, 2008 at 5:39 pm
As far as I know, my library still exists! And we even (!!!!) do Dialog and Lexis/Nexis searches. And cataloging! We don’t all work for large corporations in big cities that have offices in other countries and can afford and need digital collections or virtual libraries or etc., etc., etc. And we certainly seem busy enough!
June 23, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I’m not suggesting DIALOG and LexisNexis have become obsolete, that was poor phrasing on my part. Or even that cataloging has, though it certainly looks to be going through major changes.
I do wonder how much the picture changes based on region and city/size, as well as industry though, and I’ve emailed Susan to see if she can clarify. So we’re stuck with dueling anecdotes until then, I’m afraid.
June 26, 2008 at 10:05 am
I’m really shocked that someone would say Corporate Libraries don’t exist anymore. Where are they getting their information from?
All one has to do is check out the SLA Business & Finance group to discover that Corporate Libraries are here and thriving. As for the cataloguing bit, I’m not sure Corporate Libraries ever really did that, but we are definitely using a lot of traditional sources still and do traditional reference work. It’s just within the parameters of your industry. We even have over 1000 books and a large active filing room! You can’t get more “Library” than that! lol
June 26, 2008 at 11:47 am
Thank you, Laurie! I couldn’t agree more. I just didn’t understand the statement that corporate libraries don’t exist any more, either. I’ve read news reports saying they’re thriving and in this day and age when information reigns supreme are the wave of the future. As Steven says, they probably meant to say that the traditional corporate library has changed - not that it no longer exists. And although they may have changed, they will always be libraries and will, I hope, always have traditional library functions - like cataloging and checking books (in whatever format) in and out.
And I just have to ask - why wouldn’t a corporate library ever do cataloging? We get very specialized and rather obscure items in our library that require original cataloging. I can’t imagine that we’re alone in that.