by Cindy Romaine, SLA President 2011

Just 365 days ago, the first post went up on FutureReady365. From its inception, the FutureReady365 blog had one big, wild, hairy, audacious goal. We sought answers to a single, provocative question: How are YOU Future Ready? A dedicated team of volunteers committed to publishing a new post every day of 2011 and—WE DID IT!

Over the course of 2011, information professionals from around the world posted solutions, strategies, tactics, and tips. They showcased how they are preparing for a future that is indeed bright. It was a great conversation on an important topic, and your contribution made us smarter and better informed.

So before I look back, I’d like to thank my team of stalwart volunteers. And I have to express my admiration for everyone who posted for us. And I have to thank the readers who participated, posted comments, and kept coming back for more. Thank you all!

For me, personally, it was a great experience to serve as a catalyst to this conversation. As I bow out as SLA President and we prepare to re-invent FutureReady365, I want to share a few lessons I learned from the posts and from the experience of running a daily blog.

Great members, great posts

1. What’s Hot. We’re faced with a lot of seemingly orthogonal issues, related only tangentially, but they do connect to the issues of the day. The blog followers are amazingly adept at connecting the dots and reacting quickly. There were three issues that we kept hearing about, in one form or another:

• How information pros are adding value.
• The importance of collaborating constantly.
• The necessity of embracing technology.

2. Already There. Many SLA members and information professional are already engaged in some very interesting, completely future-ready activities. Whether you are working with data fusion, e-readers, or mobile apps, you get it and you’re there.

3. Business Savvy Required. The most savvy members have survived and thrived in an amazing technological revolution. But the best geeks don’t make the best information professionals. There are some core attributes on the business side that can make or break your career. Technology AND business acumen are required in order to be Future Ready.

4. It’s Quotable. There was some great writing on the site, and it is impossible to narrow it down, but here a few examples of one-liners that I liked:

• “Pick yourself.” ~ Dale Stanley, April 6
• “Stick your nose into other people’s conversations.” ~ Gloria Miller, March 3
• “They call it ‘data fusion.’ I call it sexxxay!” ~ Juliane Schneider, April 15
• “… define your library as a place for innovation and experimentation….” ~ Helen Josephine, March 10

Embracing the Daily Grind
I had never managed a publishing effort on this scale, and none of the FutureReady team had either. But at the end of the day, it all came down to something many SLA members are exceedingly good at: project management. We created a schedule, assigned roles, and became a well-oiled machine. Here are some random musings about how we did it.

5. SLA is made up of tribes. The divisions and chapters have their own interests and personalities, and they’re never shy about expressing their feelings. And that’s good! It took us about half the year to figure that out, and to tap into it efficiently. When we did, it was like rocket fuel.

6. Go Team! It’s hard to overstate the enormous contribution and dedication it took to implement this project. Here’s a shout out to the team: Meryl B. Cole, Michelle Mayes, Arik Johnson, Christian Gray, Jill Strand, Chris Vestal, Tiffany Renshaw, Jamal Cromity, Lorene Kennard, Dennie Heye, Sharon Rivers, Cindy Shamel, Kendra Levine, and many others.

7. The power of social media is in the connections. Sure, I know what you are thinking: “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” But seriously, human beings are social creatures. Something deep in our DNA makes us love to share and learn from each other. Camaraderie was essential to the FutureReady365 success, and just like with the holiday spirit, it’s as much fun to give as it is to receive.

8. Social media is free, but it is not cheap. It takes many man-hours to staff a robust social media program. It takes planning, hard work, and energized people who make and keep their commitments. There was nothing accidental about our success. We improvised, overcame, and adapted, all with amazing agility, and we walked the talk about what it takes to be Future Ready while doing it.

It was good for me
The FutureReady365 blog benefited me on a personal level, too. I always had something to talk about with fellow professionals. “Always be recruiting” became my mantra, and I learned to be boringly consistent so that others would know what to expect from me. Here’s what it meant to my personal journey:

9. I can rise to the occasion. I learned that I can reach deep inside of myself and pull out something that I did not know was there. I can be outside of my comfort zone pretty much all the time and still breathe. It was taxing, and sacrifices were made, but, at the end of a terrific year, I can say—it was worth it.

10. Go big or go home. I also learned that when people put their trust in you and give you their vote, you can’t be shy. You can’t plan a modest agenda. If you try hard and fail, at least you tried. If you try hard and succeed, you can feel really, really good about it.

11. SLA Rocks. Finally, recently, I led a delegation to Cuba for a professional exchange. Frankly, it is not a wealthy country; internet connections are slow or non-existent, and the computers are seriously outdated. Can you say 3.5-inch floppy? Yet somehow, the librarians manage to put together useful collections and provide good services, so their spirit gets an A+. All this made me realize—yet again—that this is a pretty darn good profession to be in.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what will become of FutureReady365 in the future. Turn it in to an HBO Special? Or should I go with a Discovery Channel reality show? How about a New York Times best-seller? We’ll have to wait and see. Then again, in his December 30 blog post, Brent Mai, SLA’s 2012 President, challenged me to take this blog to the next level. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be hearing from me AGAIN!

Thanks a million – truly.

Cindy Romaine is SLA President 2011. She is the owner of Romainiacs Intelligent Research and long-time active member of SLA and the Oregon Chapter.

by Brent Mai, SLA President 2012

The Future Ready 365 Blog has been an outstanding success!! The vision that Cindy Romaine, 2011 SLA President, had for this endeavor was planted more than a year ago. It was carefully tended and nourished by Cindy and her team (led by a couple of indomitable ladies – Meryl Cole & Michelle Mayes), and it blossomed a thousand fold throughout the year. She brought together leading thinkers on the spirit of being Future Ready, not only from within our profession but from disparate corners of the information-seeking world. Both Cindy and I, and perhaps others, have borrowed generously from the marvelous contributions when making our presentations to colleagues worldwide in 2011. Thanks, Cindy!

Cindy’s presidential theme of Future Ready definitely inspired what I chose for the 2012 presidential theme: Future Now. As I read the daily blog posts, it became evident that in many respects, the Future Ready concepts being postulated were already underway, and if we were going to be truly prepared, we needed to be thinking “in the future” already. And how can we best be prepared for this future, which is already here? We’ve got to be agile – nimble, quick to adjust to new forces, new ideas, and new solutions. So I added a subtext to the theme – Future Now: Operation Agility.

The momentum generated by the Future Ready blog must not be allowed to wane. At a brainstorming session I had with the SLA staff in December, we began to think about how to best make use of the inspiring concepts generated by the blog. It will be a challenge to keep them alive and fresh in the minds of SLA’s Future Ready members. Cindy has accepted this challenge as her first task as SLA’s Past-President in 2012. Thanks again, Cindy!!

Brent Mai is University Librarian at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, and 2012 SLA President.

by Deb Hunt, 2012 SLA President-Elect

I often hear my colleagues discuss how SLA or other professional associations need to do more for members. What I don’t hear so much is how we can do more for ourselves. There are opportunities to learn and expand our skillset and value through SLA, but we need to expend the effort and funds to take advantage of them. As a candidate for SLA President-Elect, I talked to members all over the world. Many are rightly concerned that jobs are going away and that we often feel like we are on a downward path. But, what I also hear are excuses:

• I don’t attend the annual conference, CE courses, local meetings, etc. because my company no longer pays my way;
• I’m unemployed and cannot afford to attend events;
• I don’t have time to develop new skills;
• I cannot do professional development while at work due to firewall issues.

My response is that we cannot afford NOT to attend events and continue learning. If we don’t invest in ourselves, who will? This past year, I invested a substantial sum of money to attend a virtual online course to earn a certification in enterprise content management, an area of work that I’ve moved into over the past few years. Did a client or employer require me to earn this certificate? No, but I recognized that it gave me more credibility with potential clients and was well worth the time, effort and money.

Over my many years in the information profession, I’ve seen us move into areas of work that didn’t even appear on the radar back when I was in graduate school. If we continue to be future ready and agile, we can expand into other careers where there are jobs, money and opportunity. As I’ve added services to my own business, Information Edge, beyond more traditional areas of research and value-added analysis and library design and automation, I’ve leapt off the edge into expanding areas of opportunity. I’ve moved into document and enterprise content management, building on my info pro skillset, always learning, always on the lookout for new opportunities. There is a whole world out there that needs our skills and expertise, but we must be willing to take the leap, ever-learning, ever investing in ourselves and branding what we do as a valuable asset to any organization.

Deb Hunt is Principal of Information Edge which empowers clients to find the information they need to do their work. Information Edge specializes in enterprise content management, knowledge services, professional research, and library design and automation.
Deb has been a member of SLA since 1986 and SLA’s 2012 President-Elect. She served on the SLA Board as a Director from 2008-2010 and is the creator and team leader of SLA’s 23 Things, for which she received the SLA Presidential Award. She is a past President of the San Francisco Bay Region Chapter and a member of the Silicon Valley chapter and the Library Management, KM, and IT divisions. She is an active member in the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) and served on its Board of Directors from 2001-2003.

by Anne Caputo, 2010 President, SLA

People of every generation think they live in a time of dramatic change–change far more revolutionary than any that came before. I try very hard not to be one of those who lament the loss of former times and say the past was better than the present. What I do say, however, is that we are living in a “new normal” state of affairs. Old assumptions and practices are passing away, and what we are left with has become a kind of replacement for what had been normal.

If we want to be Future Ready and thrive in the new normal we need to be mindful of four things:

First, a roadmap is required. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland and many other books of whimsy said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” We don’t want to travel by just any road, but by the best-informed, best-prepared route. I would suggest we look to the Alignment Project and the emerging Future Ready Toolkit, which will offer elements to create our roadmap. The toolkit will provide resume templates and sample cover letters, brand-building suggestions and examples, communication tools, descriptions of best practices, and information about skills we can use to transition to other jobs.

Second, fundamental values matter. Our core competencies of selecting and acquiring the best and most appropriate content, organizing and describing content in ways that make it useful and findable, assisting in choosing the best sources, and teaching others to use our tools have never been more needed and more valued. We need to describe these skills in ways our clients can understand and continually adapt them to meet the needs at hand.

Third, follow the money. By this I mean we must believe in the value we provide, measure and articulate that value in meaningful ways, and create sustainable programs, organizations and services that fit the new normal. We are not, as a profession, skilled at measuring and articulating our return on investment, but the Alignment Toolkit will provide us with suggestions and examples for measuring and demonstrating value within our organizations.

Finally, action trumps inaction. Will Rogers, the American humorist, once said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Holding back and waiting for someone else to take the initiative is not a good strategy at a time when the new normal is being invented. Take action to ensure you, your function, your skills, and your fundamental competencies become part of the new normal.

We must move away from old models that do not work while adopting new models that take advantage of our skills. Changes in information delivery, storage, organization, and acquisition beg for a new normal. We must become the centerpiece in making the new normal a success.

Anne Caputo is the Executive Director of Dow Jones Learning & Information Professional Programs. Additionally she is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, College of Library and Information Services. She was the 2010 President of SLA and is a history graduate of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Ms Caputo holds advanced degrees in architectural history from the University of Oregon and in library and information science from San Jose State University.

by Blane Dessy

Federal agencies are constantly looking to new models of how the business of government is conducted and making strides to improve techniques and practices at every level of service. To be future ready, Federal librarians will need to discover forthcoming agency efforts and package their services to serve the project mission. To stay in the forefront of emerging trends, they will need to merge information from various groups and identify information available from external sources.

To define this future, FEDLINK completed an environmental scan of the external factors that may influence the information field. The scan included a review of materials from a variety of organizations including the Special Libraries Association, OCLC, the Pew Internet and American Life Project, and Outsell, a noted research firm that focuses on issues relating to the information industry. FEDLINK also reviewed materials from the federal government on reforming information technology in the federal government, information on transparency in government and samples of resources making use of new technologies.

After a thorough analysis, the environmental scan identified seven major trends that define how Federal libraries can be future ready.

Trend number 1: Demonstrate returns on investment.
Libraries will need data on use and cost savings not just in financial terms, but also in terms of savings in staff efficiency. Librarians will need to use a variety of analytics to document costs and benefits.

Trend number 2: Establish mission critical programs.
Managers will more broadly define processes, standards and policies and explore a variety of options to insure viability.

Trend number 3: Integrate mobile devices, “apps” and dashboards into workflows.
Libraries will need to create tailored apps to access library resources and programs through mobile devices.

Trend number 4: Expand roles as analyst, educator and consultant.
Librarians will need to integrate evaluation tools with the newest software and devices and expand instruction in digital literacy and online searching techniques.

Trend number 5: Cultivate use of the Semantic Web, cloud computing and Web 3.0.
Library use of social collaboration and interactive responsibility will combine with Web 3.0 technologies to create a semantic Web that includes human intelligence combined with data management where content and technology are now one. With increasingly cloud-based sources and tools, librarians will serve as a bridge to share information and support projects that cross agency lines.

Trend number 6: Customize and personalize information to meet the needs of users.
With the proliferation of mobile technologies, the semantic web and other web searching technologies patrons will want information compiled so that it is immediately usable and tailored to meet a specific need.

Trend number 7: Collaborate via knowledge transfer and information sharing.
In tandem with the previous trends, libraries will need to discover forthcoming agency efforts and package their services to serve the project mission.

Librarians also will need to integrate evaluation tools with the newest software and devices and expand instruction in digital literacy and online searching techniques. We must help to make the connections required for knowledge transfer from one generation to the next.

To respond to these future directions, FEDLINK released new competencies for federal librarians and uses them as a centerpiece for developing FEDLINK’s education programming. Our outreach efforts now combine the use of online learning systems, continued efforts on mentoring and the recent creation of NewFeds, a new working group that supports the development and advancement of early career professionals with less than five years of federal service. NewFeds is also concerned with building a sense of community among new FEDLINK members, advocating for new professionals, promoting careers in federal libraries and developing partnerships with other FEDLINK working groups and library professional associations.

With an eye toward trends and professional development, libraries and librarians can make their rich and valuable content compatible with current learning and researching patterns. In doing so, we set the trends and guide our users into the information future. Federal librarians want to be future ready, but just as importantly, they want to shape the future environment for their work.

Blane K. Dessy is the Executive Director of the Federal Library and Information Center Committee and the Federal Library Network at the Library of Congress. Prior to this, he had been Director of Libraries at the United States Department of Justice and the first Executive Director of the National Library of Education. He came to the Federal Government after working as a State Librarian (Alabama), Deputy State Librarian (Ohio), library consultant (Oklahoma), and public library director (Pennsylvania). He is currently also an adjunct instructor in Management and Federal Libraries at the Catholic University of America School of Library and Information Science.

Mr. Dessy received his MLS degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1976 and subsequently attended advanced library management training at the School of Business Administration at Miami University (Ohio).

He is the recipient of two John Cotton Dana Awards for library public relations. While at the Department of Justice, he received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award, the second highest honor in the Department of Justice.

by Doug Newcomb, SLA

The late U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen once famously said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” That statement says a lot about how public policy is made, but it’s also an appropriate metaphor for the way our profession (indeed, nearly every profession) responds to changes in the environment.

Big changes make headlines, but small ones are mostly overlooked—until they result in a big change. For example, many economists were warning in the late 1990s and early 2000s that prolonged low interest rates would create a “bubble” in the real estate market. The decisions to keep interest rates low were small, but their long-term impact can hardly be overstated.

Small changes may seem to have minimal impact when viewed as discrete actions, but when combined, they can lead to a new dynamic in our environment. This dynamic can be positive or harmful—cutting spending on information resources can force information professionals to be more creative about finding new resources and help them develop valuable skills in this area, whereas reducing spending on staff training and development can prevent info pros from acquiring new competencies and reduce their value to their organizations.

Being future ready means anticipating, responding to, and making small changes. We need to be aware of small changes in our environment so we can respond before they become big changes. Likewise, we need to take the initiative to make small changes on our own, recognizing that the real-time impact may be minimal but the aggregate effect will be both noticeable and worthwhile. The future comes one day at a time; use each day to prepare for it.

Douglas Newcomb is the Chief Operating Officer of SLA.

by Eileen Schnur, Librarian at Naval Postgraduate School and SPAWAR Pacific

A first rate line up of engaging speakers brought out applause, laughter, enlightenment and generated plenty of enthusiasm for a full house of eager Military Library Workshop (MLW) attendees in Norfolk in mid December.

There was no doubt that this meticulously planned event went off without a hitch. It looked much like a typical conference to the indiscriminate observer. In short, there were shoulder bags filled with cool vendor swag, light chatter around refreshment areas and tightly scheduled events that allowed for thoughtful question & answer periods after just about every workshop. Very well done.

However, it wasn’t until SLA President, Cindy Romaine, met with our group when I took a second look at the real reason we all took time from work and family to come together in Norfolk. “What is future ready?” She asked. I thought, ‘what are we, as informational professionals, doing to prepare ourselves for the impending joys, struggles and challenges that the information influx will be sure to bring us in the coming years?’ I wondered what great responses to this question where being quietly generated by colleagues around me.

As I looked around at what were now familiar faces seated around the many tables within the banquet room, it dawned on me that there is a deeper purpose to this workshop. I’d compare it to a time-tested recipe. In my (albeit rookie) opinion, I’m convinced the recipe is a dash of professional development, a pinch of service obligation and, well, a pound of… camaraderie.

Truthfully, the greatest take-away from MLW 2011 is buried in the background, that intangible place where the casual observer wouldn’t find it. It’s in the meet and greets, where we find camaraderie.  It’s in the lounge, or bar, or awkward standing tabletops where conversations often lead to camaraderie. By listening to both new ideas and old experiences during face to face discussions around round tables, we create that camaraderie. And, quite frankly, camaraderie will make us future ready. Without being too ethereal, I’ll say this: If military library division provides this opportunity year after year, we’ll be armed with the confidence, tools and friendships to implement those pilot projects and wildly innovative ideas. We will be slicing through tough future ready tasks with a butter knife.

Eileen Schnur received her Master of Library Science from East Carolina University in Greenville, NC.  She currently works in a dual command capacity as a librarian for the Dept of Navy. Eileen splits her hours between the Naval Postgraduate School’s Dudley Knox Library, where she serves as a virtual Reference and Instruction Librarian and SPAWAR San Diego’s Technical Library, where she is the Outreach Librarian.

From – ‘A Study of Correlation, The Effect Of R&D Information Tools On Research Success,’ Elsevier Corporate Markets

submitted by Kristopher Patterson, Kansas/Western Missouri, New York, Southern California and San Francisco Bay Region Chapters, Biomedical & Life Sciences, Engineering, Petroleum & Energy Resources, Science-Technology, and Transportation Divisions

Researchers, engineers and scientists are under increasing pressure to outperform their competition and contribute to the growth of their companies. Responses from over 600 R&D professionals established a strong correlation between the contributions made by librarians and research success. In other words, a distinct correlation exists between providing researchers, engineers and scientists with librarians and their ultimate success in R&D activities. Listed below are key takeaways from how a librarian is viewed from the perspective of a research, engineer and a scientist. Among researchers who work with librarians, 90% believe librarians make significant contributions to their R&D efforts.

While Engineers and Scientists indicate that librarians affect the R&D process in a variety of meaningful ways:

• Locate specialized information researchers have difficulty finding 59%
• Organize a firm’s internal documents for use by researchers 53%
• Connect researchers with the correct/most applicable resources 45%
• Suggest print resources not available electronically 42%
• Save significant search time for researchers, making them more productive 42%
• Are knowledge managers, helping researchers take advantage of resources 40%
• Save time & aid in research, contributing to cost savings & revenue 38%
• Determine authoritativeness/relevancy of resources 38%
• Help researchers work faster, accelerating the research process 37%
• Direct researchers beyond the obvious resources 36%

For further information, please see the detailed report, or contact me (K.Patterson@elsevier.com).

Kristopher Patterson is Elsevier’s Marketing Manager for North & South America as well as an Adjunct Professor for Touro College. He is based in New York, New York and in his spare time, he still tries to figure out the Dewey Decimal System.

The Division of Government Information is delighted to be posting on the Future Ready 365 blog this week. DGI is a diverse community of knowledgeable information professionals who share an interest in government information and government librarianship. Our posts this week come from librarians in a variety of government library environments including federal, military, and academic. These DGI blog contributors share their insights on navigating the complicated landscape that today’s information professional must travel — from getting that library job to staying on top in a rapidly changing field once you’re there. Maybe you’d like to join us on the journey! Come check out the Division of Government Information at:  http://govinfo.sla.org/.

The late Gilda Radner created a character for Saturday Night Live named Emily Litella who would speak out on various topics. Unfortunately, Miss Litella didn‘t hear things quite right so she was against the efforts to remove violins from television programs. She was corrected that the effort was to remove violence from television programs. As this new information would sink in she would realize that it was very different from what she had been thinking and she would end her spots with an apologetic, “Never mind.”

I wonder what Miss Litella would have thought of e-braries and e-books and e-journals and e-patrons and e-librarians and who knows what will be next.

It started with e-mail and as that caught on we all started living in an e-world. And to no one‘s surprise this didn‘t simplify our life in the least. We have to make distinctions between e-mail and postal mail (or the pejorative snail mail), and e-journals and print journals. Having been a cataloger I can appreciate the many challenges this created to the folks describing our collections.

From everything we read and experience we know that a lot of users will still prefer print resources, but more and more will want information made available in a variety of electronic formats ported to multiple devices. And we, being the service industry that we are, will strive to meet that need explaining to our budget folks that it doesn‘t mean it is cheaper nor that we will reduce the footprint of the library.

The January/February 2011 issue of Information Outlook was all about mobile applications. Coincidentally in my current job that has been the current push as well. The agency is rolling out mobile devices to about 1,000 research staff and we want to let them know what the Library can provide for them on their new tool.

As in other instances, this is not something the Library can do on its own. We need the help of our IT folks – the ones who control access to what is on the mobile devices – to open the gates for the Library content. We have to work with our vendors to find a good solution for subscriptions that will work in our total environment – desktop, physical collection, and mobile devices.

It is exciting when you find a partner for a project who understands the value of what we are trying to deliver to our end-users. Often we have to educate in many directions – and we have to learn. What devices is our agency buying? What information resources have mobile applications? What is the pricing structure for the access? What products will we make available?

The Oxford English Dictionary may have a mobile app, and it would be oh-so-cool to have it, but how many of us would actually push that out to our mobile end-users?

We need to keep up with the wave of e-information. The demand is there and if we don‘t do it, someone else will. Like all the other tools for information access this needs to be part of our expertise.

The same way we went from print to dial-up, to software and then to Internet – we need to help our end-users get their information on their mobile devices and keep up with what the next platform will be.

Once you find the IT and Communications folks who are managing the mobile devices work with them to develop the Library application – pointing to the Library resources that staff can access on a mobile device. Talk to your vendors to make sure you are licensed properly to give access to your users.

Review and refine your list. If you already have a page on your website listing online news resources you have a head start! Just as we had to rethink presentation and writing for the web – we have to be even more concise on a mobile device. A segmented list of resources on a website is easy to navigate – on a mobile device keep to the basics until users ask for more.

If you have been around the Internet since the early days then you‘ll remember those Under Construction pages that we used to put up and use. Those are long gone – everyone understands that the Internet is under continuous development and updating. It is the same with mobile devices. People will expect additional resources and upgraded applications. Let the vendors take care of upgrading the apps. But don‘t worry if you have a great news resource that you have finally been able to contract. Roll it out. If it is a significant resource, then roll it out right away. If you have a couple new resources in the works then roll them out together.

Two agencies I worked for had a lot of agents in the field who were then still using dial-up access for the Internet when they were on the road. For that reason we designed our pages with as little graphics as possible and did our best to avoid anything other than html.

This experience taught me something about our users. You need to take care of your biggest user group. By minimizing graphics we didn‘t hurt our onsite users with a fast connection. Our efforts helped them too. Government librarians are looking at a finite set of end users with mobile devices. Yes, they seem to breed like rabbits, but they are still expensive enough that not everyone in your organization will have one. So you don‘t want to license solely for the mobile devices. Even the mobile users will want to read the Wall Street Journal on their desktop or even in print. (Print? Remember that?)

To be good librarians we need to see what our patrons are doing and listen to their questions. We don‘t need to pounce on everything – but we need to be aware of trends so we can be ready to ride the wave and not get caught by the undertow.

So – there isn‘t an E in Library, but there is an E in Libraries and end-users and mobile devices. And there are two Es in people and those are the folks we are here to serve as librarians.

David has over 25 years of library experience having worked for federal banking agencies and other libraries. He earned his MLS from the University of Maryland in 2000 and has been a member of SLA since 1998. He has been active with the DC Chapter of SLA and the Government Information Division. He has worked in all aspects of librarianship – Reference, Cataloging, Web, Acquisitions and Electronic Resources. David started his blog – Library Buzz in 2004. He has written for the GovInfoPro Best Practices for Government Libraries and has been published in the One-Person Library Newsletter. In addition to working as a librarian, David plays trombone with DC’s Different Drummers.

The Division of Government Information is delighted to be posting on the Future Ready 365 blog this week. DGI is a diverse community of knowledgeable information professionals who share an interest in government information and government librarianship. Our posts this week come from librarians in a variety of government library environments including federal, military, and academic. These DGI blog contributors share their insights on navigating the complicated landscape that today’s information professional must travel — from getting that library job to staying on top in a rapidly changing field once you’re there. Maybe you’d like to join us on the journey! Come check out the Division of Government Information at:  http://govinfo.sla.org/.

It doesn‘t exactly take a rocket scientist to notice that libraries have changed more in the last couple of decades than they did in the century before that. When I started in this business, I learned how to order LC cards using paper forms. Last week I used the web-based administrative module of a vendor to link our ILS with the vendor‘s database of periodical articles. This represents a sea change in our profession. Again, not rocket science, but of more than passing interest to practitioners.

I‘m privileged to work in a medium-sized library that supports a small school providing mid-career graduate education to military officers. The service we give them was unimaginable two decades ago. We have people in our organization who seriously propose getting rid of a library that has been in place for a century because everything you need to know is on the web. Technological change has weaseled its way into our hearts.

This isn’t a paean to the forgotten days of yore. Libraries are better, and a hell of a lot better, than they were when I started. In 1972, when I slithered into my first professional job, no one seriously considered that it could ever be possible to hand a college student everything he needed to complete a term paper in five minutes. No one had even heard of unmediated database searching. Of course, that was the year before we got electricity and sold the mule.

Change is good. Change is life. Our business is different now, and will be ridiculously, revoltingly different in another decade. Yeah, yeah, grandpa, so what?

Well, the So What is that managers have to deal with the change. I have multicultural employees, patrons from eighty-seven countries (this year), and people whose business, maybe their physical survival, is dependent on the newest news, the latest research, the best understanding of something they never heard of before last week. Right now, the way to do that is a mix of mediated and unmediated searching, wide-ranging database access, good connectivity, careful attention to collection development, and comprehensive personal service. My building is going to be renovated starting this fall and I have to figure out how to keep services going. High excitement!

Well, never mind. We‘ll work it out. Libraries can do this stuff. Librarians can do this stuff. And we will.

Ed Burgess is the director of the Combined Arms Research Library in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is practicing to become a windy curmudgeon in his old age.