by Ned Potter, Europe Chapter, Leadership & Management Division
by Laura Woods, Europe Chapter, Leadership & Management and Legal Divisions

Libraries and information professionals are stuck in a bit of an echo chamber. We spend way too much time talking to one another, and not nearly enough time talking to the potential users. Potential users who have no idea really what a (future ready) library does, but who would probably come and visit if they did. Some people use an analogy of ‘floating voters’ to describe those currently indifferent to libraries, but I think our offer has changed so much and people’s perceptions of libraries are so far behind, these are people who don’t even realise there’s an election on…

Classic examples of our preaching to the converted often come when the profession or the industry is criticised from outside. When Seth Godin or someone from the national press puts us down, our first urge seems to be to find another librarian to commiserate with. This doesn’t do anything, not really – it’s great to engage the library community by blogging about it, but library blogs tend to be read by other librarians –  we also need to engage the people who heard all the bad stuff about libraries in the first place. We need to fight back in public. In short, we need to take greater control of the narrative arc concerning libraries, and stop letting other people write our story for us.

The presentation below is one used by myself and Laura Woods when we talk about the echo chamber – follow the Prezi through to find out more about the concept, about how it impacts negatively on libraries, and to see some ideas for marketing libraries outside of the echo chamber in future.

Ned Potter works in the field of digitisation at an academic library in the UK; he was named as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker for 2011, and is about to attend the SLA Annual Conference in Philly as a winner of the SLA-Europe Early Career Conference Award. His blog and other presentations can be found at www.thewikiman.org.
Laura Woods is the current Webmaster and Bulletin Editor for the Europe Chapter. Her blog, Organising Chaos can be read at http://woodsiegirl.wordpress.com/.

by Kimberly Silk, Toronto Chapter, Business & Finance, Academic, Leadership & Management Divisions

I graduated from what is now known as the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto in 1998, and since that time I have been mentored by many successful people, both within the information profession, and outside of it. Some of these mentors did not know they influenced me, but many of them did, and do, and I owe much of my own success to their wisdom, kindness and generosity.

Very early on in my information career, even while in graduate school, I was sure that I would not become a conventional librarian. Though I love libraries and am inspired by the knowledge they hold, I’ve always known I would not succeed in that workplace. Thanks to several wonderful professors and practitioners, I became aware of a wide variety of environments where information professionals could pursue their passions. These places were not libraries, or even information centres. But, they all employed information professionals, and those info pros were pivotal to the organization’s success.

Over the past ten years I’ve been asked to speak as someone who has pursued an “alternative” library career. I really enjoy talking about my career (who doesn’t??) but I’m surprised at how often I’m still asked. It seems to me that our profession should be evolving more quickly. I am concerned that my career path is still considered “alternative”. Here we are more than a decade into the 21^st century, where conventional library jobs continue to disappear, and at the same time the information profession is changing so quickly we struggle to define it. How can it be that my choice to not work in a conventional library is still unusual?

I am not alone in my confusion. You need to look no further than the struggles of our very own SLA to see that we’re all trying to figure out who we are, and what we want to be when we grow up. As president of the Faculty of Information Alumni Association, I talk with many students and new graduates, and it’s clear they’re nervous about the future. Of course feeling nervous as you enter a new profession is normal; still, I believe it’s our responsibility as practitioners to help new information professionals feel more confident in themselves, and optimistic about our profession.

Practitioners have a lot to offer new info pros: experience, knowledge, passion, and positive anticipation of the future. Many of us are being the change we want to see in our world. We are forging new paths, redefining our profession and weathering the bumpy road as we go. We run up against obstacles such as the squelchers who fear change, even though change is necessary, because the alternative is unthinkable. The world is changing quickly – we know we must evolve or die.

I believe we need to take personal responsibility for the future of our profession. We cannot do much about the squelchers, and it may be best to ignore them. Our energy is much better spent focusing on the future, and the future lies in the hearts and minds of the new information professionals. All of us can be active change agents through mentoring. Those of us who consider ourselves leaders can make an even bigger impact by mentoring our new colleagues – by talking with them about the exciting changes our profession is going through, the amazing opportunities opening up to us, and the adrenaline rush of achieving new firsts. I’m paying it forward through mentorship, and encourage you to, too. The most effective way to change the world is to make a positive contribution to the future, and for us, the future is the new information professional.

Kimberly Silk is the Data Librarian at the Martin Prosperity Institute, a think tank at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. She is also President of the Faculty of Information Alumni Association, and Technology Director for the Toronto Chapter of SLA. While she lovingly embraces the librarian moniker, her current job is the first that has ever held that title. Kim loves what she does, and likes to infect others with her enthusiasm. You can read her blog at www.KimberlySilk.com and email her at kimberly.silk@gmail.com.

by Allan Foster, Europe Chapter and Business & Finance Division

For more years than I care to remember I have been charting developments in business information use through an annual survey of information managers. This is the Business Information Survey published each March in Sage’s quarterly journal Business Information Review. The focus of the Survey has changed over time, from a concentration on sources of information to key issues in information management.

The methodology has also changed, from an open, widely distributed questionnaire to a series of in-depth interviews with a small number of senior corporate information managers. These are mainly based in the UK but many work for global businesses and have responsibilities for international services. If I was being pretentious(!) I would describe it now as almost ‘ethnographic’, a series of ongoing conversations with trusted colleagues, trying to chart year on year changes in their services, roles within their organisations and strategic priorities. It has only been possible to do this and to get brutal honesty from respondents by honouring a rule of strict confidence and aggregating results so as to avoid disclosing any identities. Most but not all respondents are involved in the Survey each year. In it’s 21^st year, the 2011 Survey¹ included seventeen of the interviewees from the previous year whilst another four were new participants.

Although the respondents represent a range of corporate information, library & research services, across industrial sectors and of varying sizes, I claim no statistical representativeness whatsoever for the Survey. But, given the seniority and frankness of the respondents, the findings provide a rich narrative of current practice and future intentions. It’s the latter which I’m concentrating on here as a contribution to the ‘Future Ready’ discussion.

Whilst massive turbulence in the business and financial environment is the new norm and technologies change so fast, the Survey results suggest that the crucial ‘future ready’ attitudes and skills in the corporate information scene are and will be in the next five years pretty much the same as those exhibited in successful information services now. This may be a disappointment to the ‘everything is changing’ lobby who are looking for new magic bullets and a cookbook formula to succeed in the corporate information/knowledge management world.

The key approaches and skills that define successful information management, now and in the next few years, amongst the 2011 Survey group of senior professionals, are:

1. Access to, and a good relationship with, senior executives, preferably at board level.
2. ‘Business strategy & culture fit’ – the ability to develop the information service in harmony with the company’s strategic objectives and organisational culture.
3. Developing a shrewd political instinct, having sensitive antennae amongst users and senior managers and being adaptive in consequence.
4. Financial nous – contributing to the increased profitability of the company, streamlining processes and services, reducing costs.
5. The ability to work globally with all that this implies – building alliances, harmonising & integrating services – whilst understanding different cultural and business practices which shape the environment.
6. Develop hard nosed negotiation skills with content vendors. And getting harder.
7. Responding to the growing emphasis on compliance work.
8. Managing capacity & workload, with flexibility and responsiveness.
9. Ensuring that your information/research/knowledge staff are embedded within business project and work teams.
10. Continuing to look dispassionately at alternative organisational and delivery models including outsourcing and off-shoring.
11. Embracing and handling internal ‘know-how’ as well as external data.
12. Enhancing knowledge management skills (note small rather than capitalised ‘KM’) – knowledge sharing, capturing tacit knowledge, using stories, applying appropriate technologies.
13. Use social media when appropriate. A number of respondents are somewhat sceptical of the business case for such deployment in terms of their information and research services.
14. More attention should be given to measuring the impact of the information services (including outsourcing/off-shoring), through ROI and other metrics.
15. New IT systems should be implemented in line with technological opportunities and trends but most of all to improve access to content and cost-effectiveness of services.
16. IS/KM staffing – the most important internal resource of all. Improve communications, provide development opportunities, undertake succession planning.
17. There’s no substitute for persistence and hard work.

1. These and other issues are developed much more fully in “Let’s save the company money” – the new orthodoxy. The Business Information Survey 2011. Business Information Review 28 (1), March 2011.

—————–—————–

Allan Foster (allan.foster@gmail.com) is an information industry consultant and writer, previously Director of Information Services at Keele University and a senior information manager at Manchester Business School, Lancashire Polytechnic, Sheffield Polytechnic and the British Institute of Management. He presented these findings at an SLA Europe session, Is your information service ‘Future Ready’?, in Manchester on 22^nd March 2011.

By Sean Smith, Maryland and Washington DC Chapters, Legal and Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Divisions

Libraries that are increasing their online presence—building information portals, intranets and other online resources—frequently come up against a new kind of challenge: How to effectively drive usage of online resources? This can be especially challenging for libraries that have limited marketing resources or experience.

Believe it or not, this is the exactly the dilemma that Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin faced just seven years ago when they founded Facebook on a shoestring budget.

I just published an article on The Huffington Post entitled, How Facebook Really Won the Social Media War: Viral Marketing Lessons from The Social Network. The article examines how a couple of college students, with almost no resources, marketing budget or staff launched and built the most successful social networking Web site ever. More importantly, the article demonstrates the viral marketing lessons that information professionals can learn from watching “The Social Network.”

The lessons include:

• Why having the right email lists is critically important to a successful launch;
• Why it is more effective to reach “influencers” or trendsetters than to try to reach the entire universe;
• How one email got more than 5,000 to register for Facebook in the first two weeks; and
• What time-tested marketing strategy is the real secret of Facebook’s phenomenal success?

Click here to read the full article.

Driving usage of online resources is by no means easy, but as “The Social Network” shows, with some planning, patience and perseverance, information professionals can learn to effectively drive usage to online resources. However, most SLA members have the added advantage of marketing to an internal audience with shared business objectives. The challenge, therefore, becomes how to identify specific audiences within the organization and find clever and fresh ways to capture their attention and engage them.

I encourage you to use this forum to share stories about any clever and fresh marketing ideas that you have tried to boost online information resource usage. Please leave a comment below or email me.

Sean Smith is Director of Marketing for InfoDesk, Winner: 2011 CODiE Award for “Best Business Information Resource“. InfoDesk specializes in information management solutions that help integrate, deliver and share content resources more quickly, cost effectively and securely. Follow Sean Smith on Twitter or email him directly with questions or comments at sean.smith@infodesk.com.

Karen Sawatzky, Librarian, Tapper Cuddy LLP, Winnipeg, MB

Reposted with permission from Slaw.

Everyone’s talking about the future. From LegalTech New York, where the closing keynote was the practice of law in 2020, to IT’s role in the library of the future, and SLA’s FutureReady365 blog. It’s interesting to be reading about predictions on where our profession may be going. One document I came across a while ago was the Association of Research Libraries’ 2030 Scenarios : A User Guide for Research Libraries. I started reading it (it’s 92 pages!) to see if it had any application for a law firm library.

Can you imagine the world in 2030? I can’t, but the ARL Scenarios do. It’s not quite the future that I would like to see, but then, is the present what anyone predicted 20 years ago? The scenarios envision a world where researchers are free agents, and universities scramble for funding. (Hmm…how is that different from today, at least the second part?) There are four scenarios presented: Research Entrepreneurs, Reuse and Recycle, Disciplines in Charge, and Global Followers. Each one outlines a particular day in the life of a star researcher, Hannah Chen. The world is described slightly differently in each scenario, but varies on the theme that government funding of universities will dry up, mainly due to declining tax revenues, universities will seek more partnerships with businesses, and both students and faculty will be competing for meaningful positions.

So what are the strategic implications of these scenarios? Scenario 1: Research Entrepreneurs, resonated the most with me. Note the following strategic question that arose:

How do we begin now to develop the library professional of the future – a highly capable and credible service provider who can work directly with researchers with data preparation and curation capabilities? What skills are we currently developing in our library professionals that may not be valued in the future? (p. 39)

Replace “researcher” with “lawyer”, and we’re already at this scenario, at least regarding data preparation and curation capabilities (think compiling case law on a point of law, and determining which resources have the authority to be used to develop an argument). As to the skills we’re currently developing that may not be valued in the future – how about some of the audiovisual equipment training! All kidding aside, most of the skills I have are transferable across many occupations, and even something as library-specific as cataloguing can be useful in cross-training to write computer languages.

So how does this relate to the law firm library of the future? I’ve been thinking a lot about the physical space necessary to define the library of the near future, say in the next five years or so. My current space is fairly traditional – lots of shelving for (mostly) reporting series that are no longer collected, and a small work area. I haven’t quite figured out what is the best use of the space if I had the opportunity to renovate. Should there be more social areas, equipped with comfortable chairs and tables, to encourage use of the library as a place to meet and discuss? Or should it be a quiet area, where lawyers can review the resources they need without being disturbed? My personal preference is to see the space become more conducive to conversation – kind of like the lawyers’ lounge without the bar.

There have been a number of discussions of law library space recently. I especially enjoyed Louis Mirando’s posts, Rebuilding a Law School Library. Any ideas on what the future holds for law libraries? Will private firms outsource part or all of them? Or will it be a competitive advantage to house your own knowledge management team? What skills will we need? What does 2030 look like to you?

Karen Sawatzky is a law librarian at a business law firm in Winnipeg, MB. She is passionate about marketing and personal brand building.

by Dr. Craig Fleisher, Dean, School of Business and Public Affairs, College of Coastal Georgia, USA

The future for business planners, knowledge managers, and special librarians will require enhanced sense-making ability.  In the past, finding and organizing information was the key to competitive success. Those organizations who found it first had advantages that they could often leverage in the marketplace.  Today, most individuals and organizations have excellent access to data and information; in reality, my research has shown that most organizations have too much of both, and too little of an idea for what to do with it.

Making things worse, much of the collected data and information resides in storage (i.e., data warehouses, networks, spreadsheets, etc.) where it gets stale quickly and cannot serve any viable competitive use. Like milk, information spoils if it isn’t treated and utilized. The half-life of time for acting on competitive information continues to shrink in this day and age and isn’t likely to lengthen anytime soon.

Future ready means that analysts in companies will need to work on the front-end with their data acquisition and information management/knowledge professional colleagues, making sure that what is collected provides the missing pieces to the puzzles that analysts and planners know they need to put together to support decisions. The need to make decisions drives our analysis. Our analysis needs drives our data collection. The rule for future success: Don’t collect data or information for which we do not already have analytic mechanisms in place to use it within. Why buy and store milk if you are not going to drink it?

Dr. Craig Fleisher is a former President of the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals, author of several foundational books in CI and analysis, and was awarded its Meritorious recognition for lifetime contributions to the field.

by Cynthia Eastman, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Engineering and Environmental & Resource Mgmt Divisions

We as individuals need to be future ready but so does our support structure, in other words, SLA. We talk about attracting members from outside our traditional venues but if they don’t see any division or caucus activity that is in their line of work how can we ask them to join? If we want to attract members from non-traditional fields, we need to identify those potential fields and think about what SLA should have in place to attract those people. One approach would be to identify say three fields where we think we can attract new members and then set up a new forum for those fields. Obviously these forums won’t be like divisions but they could grow into divisions over time. Perhaps they are just a few existing members getting together for discussion sessions at the annual meeting. Yes, we already have caucuses that do this but I suggest we do away with the formal caucus formation process for these forums. Perhaps it’s as simple as asking for a few volunteers to lead a discussion and then setting up a web page where discussion notes and other information can be posted.

Switching to the opposite direction, is it time to look at de-structuring some of our current divisions to help us attract and retain active volunteers? At every conference I hear stories about the difficulties some divisions have filling Board positions and supporting conference sessions. On top of that are the burn-out stories where someone steps up to be Division chair and then disappears from volunteer roles after their term ends (or even sooner). Can we come up with a “small division” option with fewer positions to worry about and a lower number of sessions to plan? Yes, I know that divisions aren’t required to fill all positions or to do the maximum number of sessions allowed. But many people are intimidated away before we get them to a point where they understand the option to wrestle things down to a manageable level.

The keynote speaker at this year’s Leadership Summit showed that “Opportunities to Gain Leadership Experience” is not one of the aspects of association membership that is rated high by non-volunteers. If we want to turn those folks into volunteers, we need to think about new options for engagement. Less structure and fewer procedural requirements might be one way to go.

Cynthia is Corporate Librarian at Kennedy Jenks Consultants, an environmental engineering firm in San Francisco. Prior to Kennedy Jenks, Cynthia was Director of Information Services as Keyser Marston Associates, a real estate consulting firm. She is program planner for the Engineering Division for the Philly and Chicago annual conferences and has served as Chair of the Environment and Resource Management Division.

by John Creighton

Community engagement is a public sector buzzword. Engagement is hailed as a key strategy to help keep institutions such as public libraries relevant now and in the future. But was does community engagement mean? And, more important, what is the purpose of community engagement?

Community engagement often is translated as a set of activities and/or events. People attend book readings, film screenings, a community dialogue. Attendance at these events becomes the purpose of engagement as well as the measure of success.

These types of activities are often worthwhile. But, does hosting an event, even if well attended, really make a library more relevant in the community? Is a meeting room with ample seating capacity an irreplaceable community asset? Can no other organization besides a library host a book reading, film screening or discussion?

To discover the full potential of civic engagement we must look beyond activities and set aside attendance as the primary metric of success.

Richard Harwood, founder of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, offers a definition for the purpose of community engagement that elevates engagement’s potential to new heights. Harwood challenges organizations to pursue community engagement as a means to improve the civic health of the community.

Let me state that again. The purpose of community engagement is to improve the civic health of the community.

What are some of the elements of a civically healthy community? The Harwood Institute’s research identifies factors such as these:

• Diverse layers of leadership at all levels of the community.
• A strong set of links and connections between diverse groups of people.
• Boundary spanning organizations and leaders willing to hold up a mirror to the community.
• A culture of constructive dialogue.

Embracing the idea that the purpose of community engagement is to improve the community’s civic health challenges engagement organizers to consider a different set of questions. The same activities are viewed in a different light.

A library team, for instance, might think differently about film screenings. The relevant questions become:

• How can we use film screenings to cultivate more diverse leadership at more levels of the community?
• How will the film screenings help people of different backgrounds forge strong connections?
• In what ways will the film screenings challenge people to look in the mirror and engage in constructive dialogue?

The ability to achieve these goals becomes the priority. Attendance becomes a secondary goal. These types of questions might even lead a library team to look outside its own buildings as the best place to show films and host conversations.

The measures of success change, too. Gatherings of a small group of people who are from diverse parts of the community may be deemed more successful than a well-attended event of like-minded library patrons.

An institution that is able to contribute to the civic health of its community – rather than just host an entertaining event – over time is far more relevant.

To what extent is your organization improving the civic health of your community?

John Creighton, a Longmont, Colorado leadership consultant, writes on community life and public leadership at johncr8on.com. He can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook. John also is a member of The Harwood Institute’s national faculty.

by Paul T. Jackson, Trescott Research

© March, 2011

“People are resilient because they have to be…although the scars never disappear totally.”

By the time Naisbitt came out with his book Megatrends 2000 wherein he said people would likely have 4 or 5 careers, I was already on my sixth career track. Here are some lessons about being flexible and adaptable and future ready from those six careers.

Lesson 1:  Be open to new possibilities.

Over time I’ve experienced many successful endeavors simply by allowing them to happen and doing my best at the tasks given.

Without a job, and while attending a performance of the Royal Ballet of England in Detroit, I was standing next to an older gentleman.  We found we had mutual friends and interests, and I was invited to a late night dinner with him. Our dinner conversation led me to my library career under Kurtz Myers, head of the Detroit Public Library Music Department.

Years later, after my university position ended, I went to the office supply store to get some copy paper for my old wet copier.  The proprietor showed me the new 3M dry toner copier, and after looking at the copy sample, I exclaimed, “Wow, I could sell this!”  The proprietor said, “You’re on. When can you start?” Thus started a career of selling office supply and machines; helping people organize their files and paper processes. This knowledge and work eventually brought me to learning and selling computers and a partnership with a computer firm helping build databases for companies and organizations.

In all of these positions I was using all of my knowledge and past experience in libraries, music publishing, research, writing, and office supply and able to do a superior performance because of it.

Lesson 2:  Be Inquisitive and ask questions.   It can lead to new ventures.

In undergraduate school, a philosophy professor had told me, “Solutions start with questions.”

At library school I felt there was a need for an organization whose archives of recorded sound could come together to share information.  I wrote and asked the curator of the Ford Museum collection, Frank Davis, what it would take to get these and other archivists together. His response was, “First, we have to have a meeting.”  This led to several meetings including an exploratory one with 22 librarians and archivists attending. They represented the largest collections of recordings in the United States.  We met in June of 1965 at Greenfield Village/Ford Museum after the American Library Association conference in Detroit.  We met again at Syracuse University, and there, in 1966, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) was founded with over 40 people attending, representing not only U.S. collections and archives, but also Canadian broadcasting and the United Nations sound recording libraries.  ARSC ( http://arsc-audio.org/ ) is now in its 45th year of existence. It only takes a question, and action, to start something significant.

Lesson 3: Give Responsibility; Take Responsibility

As a supervisor it is your job, your responsibility, to help those you supervise. This includes mentoring and developing your staff. You need to be able to teach them to take over your job, or at least keep the place operational if you are not there; no one should feel threatened by this.  It is making things better, even people.

I gave inmates responsibility to operate their prison library and law library.  They came back with ideas, they helped with grant writing, they improved services, and they took turns running the classes on writing business plans, legal research, and helping in the reading lab.  I helped train them on computers. The Corrections Accreditation Commission reported twice, our library “second to none [in the nation]” over the 8 plus years I was Director. Great things happen to your staff and their self-esteem when they have responsibility.

Lesson 4: Focus on problems–It’s not about you or me.

Someone on staff takes credit for your idea—get over it!

You have to change to smaller space—get over it!

Someone damages your ego—get over it!

Your library closes—get over it!

None of these things are important to the business of solving problems for the employer or customers.  I’ve survived all these things and in the end found solving problems was more important than who got credit. The programs I’ve helped build have survived, which to me is vastly more important.

At the music publishing group, TRO, Inc. representing over 32 publishers in 18 countries, the executives were often arguing, but once the problem was solved or the action agreed upon and discharged, they would be seen heading out the door for lunch together.

Remembering what you learned makes you so much more valuable for the next job.  Get over the closing and go on. Solving problems for the company, the employees, the customers, is the mission of every employee. This is what is remembered.

Lesson 5:  Think altruistically about leaving!

Leave something better than expected.

Growing up, my mother taught us we were to leave things better. I’m not rich financially. My career didn’t follow a well thought out plan.  It wasn’t something I started out to do.  Along the way I created new libraries, new businesses, and helped establish a national association.  I count myself a success.  When you get done, (do we ever get done?) by being resilient and practicing the lessons, you too can say, “I did good.”

Two of my favorite quotes:

“Remember, to get anything done, you first have to start.”

“The one who says it can’t be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.”

Mr. Jackson is an Information Specialist. A retired Special Librarian in Academic, Public, Corporate, and Prison libraries, he has taught research to Ph.D. candidates, and published a wide variety of articles. He is currently Editor of Plateau Area Writers Association’s Quarterly and anthology series, Contrasts. He is a member of several musical ensembles and volunteers as church librarian.  His career positions are recorded in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who International, and a profile at his web site: www.trescottresearch.com

by Kyle Naff, Wisconsin Chapter, Business & Finance Division

I’ve never been one to put much thought into themes. I understand the point of them, uniting presumably unrelated concepts into one cohesive statement or catchphrase. Yet, sometimes they just seem to stretch a little bit too much. The same could be said about our association’s themes. As an academic librarian, I have often thought that all of the corporate jargon employed in the Alignment Project didn’t apply to my situation, and I know that I wasn’t alone.

However, this year has been different, as President Romaine has directly challenged all of us to take our profession into the next stage of its evolutionary process. As I listened to her remarks on ‘Future Ready’ at the Leadership Summit, she described the past role of the information professional, as curator, guarding the materials in the physical space. This has obviously given way to the information explosion that has occurred, like a fire hydrant being emptied into the street for the masses. The role of the information professional, regardless of setting, is to stand in front of the fire hydrant to ‘save’ the rest from the brunt of the information overload.

That’s when I had the light bulb moment – our role as ‘future ready’ academics is something that we’ve been doing for quite a while: information literacy. Our job of arming students, the future leaders of our society, with the searching and evaluation tools, allows them take on the fire hydrants of information that they’ll encounter in their own careers. [Of course, one would hope that they will know about the information professionals in their organization should they need that safety net.]

Being ‘future ready’ to me means isn’t actually about me. It’s ensuring that I instill the value of credibility, reliability and critical thinking in my students. I would hope that other academic librarians would agree.

Kyle Naff is the Business Reference & Instruction Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has been involved with SLA since Day 4 of library school and is currently President of the Wisconsin Chapter and Webmaster of the Business & Finance Division. He can be reached at kyle.sla@gmail.com.