Reposted with permission from The Strategic Librarian (http://strategiclibrarian.com)

by Nina Platt, Minnesota Chapter, Competitive Intelligence, Information Technology, Knowledge Management, Legal, and Leadership & Management Divisions

My summer has been filled with a new job, new industry, new co-workers, new terminology with an overload of acronyms, and knowledge management all the time. I’m going through a transition that has had plenty of surprises for me and more to come if I’m right.

As someone who has been a director in a public library, technical services librarian in an academic library, information specialist, cataloger, systems librarian, technical services manager, and director in law firm libraries, as well as a couple stints as a consultant, I ‘ve had plenty of opportunity to develop and use the knowledge and skills of a librarian. I love my career. It provides me with challenges and variety of work that few people would expect a librarian to experience.

So why would I set aside the library part of the work to take on a role where I will be working as a knowledge manager without any library duties? In fact, I’m part of the company’s talent development team. It’s probably because it is a challenge I haven’t tackled. I’ve worked in knowledge management during the last 25 years but I always had traditional and not so traditional library duties as well. Knowledge management is what I’ve always said I wanted to do. Why then, is the transition so difficult.

While many new librarians are coming into the profession expecting to do work that isn’t traditional, most of us who have been working as librarians find the change just a tad bit difficult. It’s what keeps us from moving forward beyond the boundaries of what we know and will probably be our undoing. At the same time, it is our future. We have a lot at stake here. It isn’t news that the library and our responsibilities as we know them are changing.

You, like me, have probably taken forays into the unknown by stepping outside your level of comfort while taking on new responsibilities. When we do that we start a transition from what we know and how we operate, to the future knowledge and skills we will gain. The change may be easy, but it’s the transition that may send us heading back to what was if we have the opportunity to do so.

When a change takes place, the transition that follows, according to change management expert, William Bridges**, are three phased:

… transition is very different from change. Change is situational: the reduction in the work force, the shift in the strategy, and the switch in reporting relationships are all “changes.” Transition, on the other hand, is a three phase psychological reorientation process that people go through when they are coming to terms with change. It begins with an ending—with people letting go of their old reality and their old identity. Unless people can make a real ending, they will be unable to make a successful beginning.

He then goes on to describe the next phase, which he calls the neutral zone:

This is a no-man’s land where people are (in Matthew Arnold’s graphic image) “Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.” The neutral zone is a time and a state of being in which the old behaviors and attitudes die out, and people go dormant for a while as they prepare to move out in a new direction.

Sounds terrifying, right? Despite the fear it brings, there is hope for a new beginning, which is the final phase:

Only after going through each of these first two phases of transition can people deal successfully with the third phase: beginning over again, with new energy, a new sense of purpose, a new outlook, and a new image of themselves.

While I’ve studied change management and have looked to Bridges as one of the great minds on change process in his focus on the transition instead of the change, when I started this new position, I still stumbled in my recognition of the transition I am in. It wasn’t until this week when I told someone else that I’m going through a transition, that I realized it myself.

I’m not telling my story because I think it is extraordinary. I tell it because I believe we are all going through a transition. We’ve been very focused on helping our users with change but what have we done for ourselves? In past posts, I’ve talked about doing what we need to do to stay relevant. If we want to be here to experience working with users, information, knowledge, and more in the future, we need to focus more on the transition we are going through rather than the change.

How do we make it through all this? We need start by saying goodbye to what we’ve known. This is where I am struggling – you may be struggling with it too. If Bridges is right, we won’t make it if we try to hang on to the past. If we do let go, the neutral zone in the next phase, will be a time when things just don’t seem right and we will probably want to go back to what we’ve known. If we manage to keep moving forward, we will experience times that make changes worth it. Bridges tells us that the neutral zone is a place where innovations and experiments are possible. When we get to our new beginning, we will arrive with new ideas, ready for the future.

Saying goodbye isn’t easy. The good news is, even if the changes we’re experiencing now and in the future seem troublesome, and the transition to the new beginning is fraught with frustration, we have a lot to look forward to. I say, let’s go for it!

** William Bridges, author of several books on change and transition including:

Kathy Coorsh, Toronto Chapter, Business & Finance, Information Technology, Knowledge Management and Leadership & Management Divisions

As a librarian who has undergone some significant changes over the past year or two, I thought I should share my experiences. Organizational changes brought my library under a new VP who asked all the “hard” questions about library services & facilities, and came to the conclusion, not completely unjustified, nor unexpected, that it was time for a change. We cut our print collection by 2/3, reduced the library footprint by probably more than that & created “archives” on a separate floor. However, I was assured repeatedly that there was still a role required for reduced library services in the organization and, more importantly, that he valued my skills and experience but felt that I could deploy them in other areas of our operations. So now in addition to providing library services, albeit quite curtailed, as you can imagine, I am also responsible for establishing and maintaining our social media presence and am involved in other areas which I had not been previously.

So, after some 20+ years it is quite a change, but, so far so good. I am enjoying most of the changes & new functions & learning a lot! While I do wish I had the luxury of providing the kind of library services I know would be beneficial & useful, the reality of the situation is that greater organizational needs exist elsewhere. I’m just grateful that my professional skills and all the continuing ed. courses, conferences & readings helped me keep stay ahead of the curve of new trends, innovations and technology that facilitated my move into this new area.

I should also point out that while our print collection was cut significantly we do still have an active and expanding digital collection. The organization is still committed to a reduced library.

Kathy (Katalin) Coorsh has been a practicing professional librarian for over 30 years. She started at Concordia University (Sir George Williams University) in Montreal as Public Services and Orientation Librarian for over 6 years then worked as librarian for non-profit organizations after moving to Toronto in 1980. She has been Chief Librarian with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business since 1984. She received her MLS from McGill University, Montreal and her BA from Sir George Williams University, Montreal.

by Hal Kirkwood, Indiana Chapter, Business & Finance, Competitive Intelligence Divisions

‘Alice remarked in great surprise, “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! In our country, you’d generally get to somewhere else if you ran very fast for a long time.”’

“A slow sort of country!” replied the Queen. “Now, here you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”

An article that I have kept and reread over and over is by Arnold Hirshon in Advances in Librarianship entitled ‘Running with the Red Queen: Breaking New Habits to Survive in the Virtual World’. In this article he talks about reinventing reference, meeting increased customer expectations, changing strategic directions, changing our physical spaces, changing how we collaborate, coping with the speed of technological change, and integrating technology effectively.

This article was written in 1996.

These issues are as relevant now as they were 15 years ago. The competition from Google, the multitude of technological options available, the need for building information literacy skills, the necessity to change our physical spaces and how we connect with our constituents are all challenges we as information professionals must face today. We must define our role. We must create the future. To remain relevant we have to run twice as fast to get anywhere, this is what Future Ready means to me.

Hal Kirkwood is the Associate Head of the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics at Purdue University. He is a past-chair of the Business & Finance Division.
Hal is currently running for one of the two Director positions on the SLA Board. He can be reached at kirkwood@purdue.edu.

Originally published in 2010′s “Best Practices in Government Libraries”)

by Chris Vestal, Washington, DC Chapter, Government Information, Leadership & Management Divisions

It all started with dinner. I was at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered Issues Caucus’s (GLBTIC) annual dinner at the SLA Annual Conference in Denver 2007. I was about nine months into my MLIS program and this was the first conference I’d ever attended–but I’m getting a little ahead of myself. 

I was one of the students enrolled in Drexel University’s iSchool’s totally online program. One of the things that Drexel stressed was that being involved in a professional association was vital to staying on top of trends in the profession, furthering your professional development, and building a support network of colleagues so you could be in a strong position for an uncertain future. We were actually required to pick three different associations to research and then compare and contrast and see which ones could be the best fit for our interests. Most of the students that I talked to agreed that they could benefit from being a part of a professional association. 

What set me apart from most of my classmates though was that I had no library experience. I’d never even shelved a book in my life and because I also worked full-time in an unrelated field I didn’t have the time to take a part-time job or internship that would give me that experience. So to me getting involved in a professional association seemed like the only way to get some real world knowledge about the profession. I knew I was interested in working in a special library so SLA seemed like the right fit. I decided that year I’d attend the SLA conference. 

Like I said we’d already discussed the value of professional associations in one of my classes. Several instructors emphasized the impact that networking opportunities could have on our careers. But what we hadn’t talked about is what a shy person does at a conference where they don’t know anyone. All the faces were unfamiliar and the idea of randomly introducing myself to strangers was unthinkable–until I attended one session called “Networking for Wallflowers” and saw how many people felt the same way I did. After the workshop I did attempt to meet more people but it still felt awkward. 

That changed though when I walked into GLBTIC’s annual business meeting. Here were professionals I felt totally comfortable around. I took advantage of the brief networking opportunities there and promised myself I’d attend the no host dinner later that evening. At the dinner I met more people and told them about my limited experience and asked what I should to position myself for job hunting when I finished library school. The answers varied but all contained one near universal nugget of wisdom–get involved in SLA. 

A year went by where aside from reading Information Outlook I didn’t have time to be active in SLA. But I still had vacation time so I made a point of attending the SLA conference in Seattle. I found that conference was a much easier experience for me in terms of networking. Now thanks to the GLBTIC dinner and other events I recognized several faces and was much less hesitant to introduce myself to new people. I was closer to graduating at that point and was avidly seeking out job leads. At one dinner someone told me that the most valuable thing I could do would be to get involved with my local SLA chapter. 

I took this advice to heart and started attending as many networking and professional development events as possible. I subscribed to the chapter listserve and read each message that came across. 

An announcement about DC/SLA Young Professional’s and Student’s Happy Hour came across the listserv and I thought it’d be a fun event to attend. One of the attendees there told me about the company she worked for and I remember thinking it sounded like a really interesting job. A few weeks later I saw an announcement over the listserv about a federal government career fair for librarians at the Library of Congress. I went to the career fair and ran into a recruiter for the company I’d heard about at the happy hour earlier. Within days of chatting with the recruiter I’d been hired in my first library related position. 

But that was really just the beginning of my involvement with DC/SLA. A few months later the DC/SLA President contacted me saying she remembered meeting me at function and wanted to know if I was interested in being the chapter Dine Around (networking dinners for members and friends at local area restaurants) Coordinator. I agreed and went to work recruiting volunteers to host the dinners and then marketing them to the chapter. 

I was surprised by the enthusiastic response we received from the chapter. We had 22 Dine Arounds over the course of 2009. I met so many people I might not have otherwise. I got to know people who became friends, people who challenged me, people on the verge of retiring, and people just starting off in their careers–like me. There’s no question that I learned a great deal in library school but I learned so much more about the profession, the association, and about myself by having dinner with all those different people. It turned out that even people I never met at a Dine Around would “meet” me; they’d recognize my name from the promotional emails I sent to the listserv and then approach me at other events. 

One Dine Around attendee told me about the DC/SLA New Members Reception and I decided to attend. There I heard Current SLA President Gloria Zamora and President-Elect Anne Caputo talk about the Alignment Project and what it meant for the profession. Recalling their presentation I signed up to be an Alignment Ambassador later that year. 

As an Alignment Ambassador I responded to member concerns via Twitter, the listserv, Facebook, and at a Town Hall Meeting. While I was doing this I realized something about myself–that I really enjoy public speaking and writing. But maybe even more importantly is that other people noticed me and I was approached to take over the chapter’s newsletter, Chapter Notes. Working on Chapter Notes in many ways has been like an extension of the Dine Arounds–I get to meet many people with different views, experiences, and skills and learn from them all while doing something I enjoy. 

So my point is I can’t possible overstate how important being active in a professional association is to being future ready. You get all the benefits you’d expect like networking and professional development opportunities, but chances are you’ll benefit in countless other ways too. Subscribing to an association listserv provides you with opportunities to get support directly from your peers (especially important for solo librarians) and invaluable information about what’s going on either in your field or location. By taking on different roles in the association there’s a good chance you’ll learn something about yourself–what you enjoy and what you’re strengths are. You can develop skills (like event planning) you might not get to utilize in your paid job which translates into increased marketability when job hunting. The people you get to know can help you grow in ways you’d never expect–like approaching you for opportunities you didn’t even think to look for. Talking with experienced people in the field can prepare you for issues in your work life and keep you from having to reinvent the wheel. For me, informal stories from Dine Around attendees helped me when I transitioned into my first position supervising other professionals. But perhaps most importantly being involved in an association gives others a chance to get to know you and see how you shine. And it can all start with something as simple as having dinner.

Chris Vestal is a Supervisory Patent Researcher with ASRC Management Services on its contract at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Chris is also DC/SLA’s 2011 Communication Secretary.

By Lisa Subia 

I am a full-time student and also a single parent of two special-needs boys. Some days, it’s hard to worry about making myself Future Ready when I have so much work to do staying “Present Ready.” What I’ve found to keep me going is an idea as old as civilization itself – volunteering. There is something about donating my time to those who need it that is not only personally fulfilling, but also offers a chance to hone skills I might not otherwise sharpen. Making my personal tool kit as up-to-date as possible is how I stay Future Ready.
 
The need for help is staggering. It turns out that America is still a beacon for the rest of the world, and many recent immigrants need help with all number of skills we take for granted. For example, I had no idea that there are so many refugees in my local school district who need basic tutoring in the “three ‘R’s” – reading, writing, and arithmetic. So that’s where I plugged in. I started slowly, but I’m now able to volunteer at least two or three hours every other week.
 
I found that the old adage is right – if you want to learn a subject, be a teacher. You have to work hard to keep ahead of the students, and you force yourself to improve your own skills constantly. There is something about setting yourself up as an expert on a subject that makes you constantly scramble to improve. Those kids are smart! They are always looking forward, and they want to know everything instantly. You could say that I’m helping make the students more Future Ready at each and every session, but I’m also helping myself at the same time. That makes it feel twice as nice.

Lisa Subia is a nursing student at Portland State University. She is an active volunteer in the local community, and she shares her approach to combining volunteerism with the drive to make herself Future Ready.

by Alyssa Vincent, Oregon Chapter, Museums, Arts & Humanities Division

As an MLS student about to start my second year of study, I feel that I am gaining more of an understanding of what it will take to succeed in this profession. As I write this, I have just completed my “Research in Library and Information Science” class, and I know that the skills gained from that experience are the ones that will help me shape my future career.

A major foundation of this class was the concept of evidence-based practice. With budget cuts plaguing the information profession, nothing makes more sense than committing time and energy to conducting research that will enhance our services or identify weaknesses. For my evidence-based action plan paper, I chose to investigate the role of the librarian in a corporation and ways to improve that service. After many weeks of researching, I was able to formulate an action plan that both asserted that embedded librarianship was a worthwhile service model for corporations and provided steps on how to embed a librarian.

The difficult part of the realization that evidence-based practice through research is a key component to a thriving career is that the time that I was able to devote to research is a luxury in professional environments. So, what happens to my belief that research will move our profession forward when time is at a premium? It adapts and doubles in conviction. No, I may not have months to conduct studies of use patterns, but perhaps I can take a few moments to observe the foot traffic in my library. By continuously striving to work from a foundation of evidence-based practice, I will be improving the services that I can offer my users, even if I cannot devote weeks or months to developing theories or conducting surveys.

Alyssa Vincent is a midwesterner at heart who is enjoying pursuing her MLS in Portland, OR through Emporia State University. She has a bachelor’s degree in print journalism and gender and women’s studies. When she’s not responding to posts on Blackboard or splitting her professional time between a technology-centered non-profit and a small architecture library, she’s reading about fashion, biking around town, and cooking. Her professional interests include digitization issues in relation to 3D objects and embedded librarianship, and she looks forward to somehow marrying those interests in the future.

by Chris Mulready, Pacific Northwest Chapter, Leadership& Management Division

More importantly, am I motivated? My company is trying a new (older) idea of self-directed work teams. Our version is called Employee Involvement, and due to my inability to say “no,” I am leading our team on the “journey.” Someone passed me this really cool link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc, and after I watched it, I was energized. There are so many cool things about this video. Number one: the animation is amazing! I dare you not to be stuck to your computer screen.The next: the content. I was interested in hearing about these studies on motivation and involvement. I showed it at a team meeting, and got all eight people high on this concept. Now, I want to turn this Association on to it (and my apologies if you’ve seen it too many times!). Be sure and check out the video response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPLlRAHi3X8&feature=watch_response and begin discussing amongst yourselves. “Believe in yourself, and you will eventually get to your dream, even if the road seems incredibly long.”

Chris Mulready is active in the Pacific Northwest Chapter, having been the chapter’s Bulletin Editor, Webmaster, and taking two terms each as Tresurer and President. He has also served as Convener for the GLBT Issue Caucus.

by Jim Scheppke, State Librarian, Oregon State Library

I thought my SLA colleagues might be interested in learning a bit about public libraries that are future ready and what that looks like.

We just had a new public library open across the Columbia River from us in Vancouver, Washington, that is future ready. When you walk in you won’t see any service counters. There aren’t any. That’s because the library staff are all on their feet, engaging customers at their point of need. And I mean all of the public service staff. The old hierarchies between librarians and support staff are gone too. The staff use hands-free voice technology from Vocera so they can work together and share everyone’s knowledge and ability to serve customers.

The situation is similar at the new Kenton Branch of the Multnomah County Library back across the river in Portland. No circ desk! Library users check out their own materials at the convenient RFID circulation stations. Public service staff carry around an iPad using a special glove-like holder to assist customers. Who needs a desk when you literally have the Web in the palm of your hand?

What used to be called “desk reference” is dead. The desks are gone in these future ready libraries. The new trend is “roving reference” – high tech and high touch. And yes, we have mobile reference – chat and text – too. Customers love it. Who says the public sector can’t provide world-class customer service. We are doing it here in Oregon and Washington.

Jim Scheppke has been State Librarian of Oregon since 1991. He’s worked at the Oregon State Library since 1986, and before that at the Texas State Library and the West Texas Library System. Before becoming a librarian he worked as an independent bookseller. He has served as president of the Oregon Library Association and of the Western Council of State Libraries , and has written numerous articles for professional library publications.
He was named Oregon Library Association Librarian of the Year in 1996. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oregon Association of School Libraries in 2001 and was named Honorary Life Member of the Oregon Library Association in 2011. He holds an Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

By James King, Washington DC & Maryland Chapters, Government Information & Information Technology Divisions

What do we need to do in order to survive and thrive in the 21^st Century?  The most successful organizations are those that have come up with innovative ways of doing things, like Amazon, Apple, or Facebook.  Are we part of an innovative organization? What does it take to be innovative? 

“The Innovator’s DNA” (Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen; Harvard Business Review, December 2009 – http://hbr.org/product/the-innovator-s-dna/an/R0912E-PDF-ENG) provides an answer. The authors report on a six year study of the people behind some of the most innovative and disruptive business strategies in the world to see what makes them tick.  What they found are five discovery skills that seem to distinguish these leaders and can serve as a model for others that want to strive for that “critical thinking” that Thomas Friedman challenged us to in his keynote speech at SLA Annual.

The five discovery skills or “Innovator’s DNA” are questioning, observing, experimenting, networking, and associating.  Not only do I agree with their findings about these traits, but I also realize that we can learn and develop these, and that my involvement with SLA helps me strive towards each of them.

Questioning – asking questions to dig deeper

Questioning often reveals sacred cows and entrenched traditions that are holding us back from improved ways of serving our customers or streamlining our back office operations.  Having well-researched facts about how other organizations operate and how executives view our profession (as is described in the Alignment report) I can be better prepared to ask questions about why certain practices or processes are still being observed in my organization.

Observing – watching the world around us

By observing and studying our customers and other organizations around us, we can learn many valuable lessons and change our services for the better. Participating in the Annual Conference, local chapter events, reading articles from Information Outlook, following the Twitter posts from the Information Futurist Caucus, or reading blog entries from the Future Ready blog can all help us to monitor the rapidly-changing information industry.

Experimenting – willing to try new things

Experimenting and risk failure is a critical trait of an innovative person.  Involvement in chapters or divisions can encourage experimentation by providing a “safe haven” without a direct risk to your pay or benefits. The article pointed out that one of the most powerful experimentations is to work globally. By having access to a global association like SLA, we are able and encouraged to build collaborations with fellow professionals around the world, which will undoubtedly broaden our perspective. 

Networking – building relationships with peers

Networking is probably one of the hallmarks of participation in conferences or attending local chapter events is the opportunity to build relationships with peers.  Those networks can provide a mentor, a friend, or even a future job prospect.  However, the digital world and social networking have also allowed us to better maintain those initial contacts and develop those relationships.

Associating – creating connections

The final trait of their DNA pulls together the four actions (questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking) and creates connections.  Those mental connections are the spark of innovation and have spawned new business processes and changed the world.  Though this is ultimately a personal exercise, learning from others who have made unconventional associations to create new services for our customers will help and encourage us to do likewise.

Building a culture that allows and encourages these innovative traits at both the manager level and employee level will challenge traditional leadership and traditional librarianship but will result in a more relevant and innovative organization.  Whether we have the support where we are or not, are we taking advantage of the opportunities available to us through SLA to build these innovative traits or simply running the treadmill to retirement?

James King, SLA Fellow, was the 2010 President of the Washington, DC Chapter and is the long-time convener of the Information Futurists Caucus. He is currently serving at the national level as an Alignment Ambassador, chair of the Nominating Committee, and was on the 2011 Annual Conference Planning Council. View a fuller bio at http://about.me/edit/cmndr_king.

by Aimee Babcock-Ellis, Washington, DC Chapter, Advertising & Marketing, Chemistry, and Government Information Divisions

When I first started as a Graduate Assistant at the University of Maryland my supervisor, Mr. Allan Rough, told me about his first job as a librarian and why it was such a good learning experience for him. The manager who ran the school that he worked at had an open door policy and was interested in hearing about the new ideas people had. He was willing to try new ideas for a set period of time. It was a good learning experience for Mr. Rough, because he learned how to develop and implement new ideas. He also learned to be open to new initiatives and to take risks.

I believe that managers can help support their new (and seasoned) employees by being open to new ideas and taking time to listen to their colleagues. Ideas have to be discussed in order for them to fully develop. Open communication is key to having a harmonious and innovative work place. Discussing ideas amongst the staff may also allow seasoned employees to contribute some of their institutional knowledge on things that have or have not worked well in the past. Institutional knowledge is something new employees lack and can greatly benefit from.

Many new ideas come from attending conferences and other professional development activities. I know we are in tough financial times, so even if your organization cannot fund employees to attend events, allowing them the time off to go shows you support their development and encourage new ideas.

New employees often want to connect with other staffers who are new too. This is how I felt when I started my first professional job with the federal government and how the NewFeds committee came about. The NewFeds is a Federal Library Information Center Committee (FLICC) Working Group. We are building a community for those new to working for the federal government, specifically in libraries.

Aimee is a native of upstate NY living in the Washington DC metro area. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Communications from SUNY New Paltz and a Masters in Library Science from the University of Maryland at College Park. Aimee is a 2007 Spectrum Scholar and a 2010 Association of Research Libraries Career Enhancement Fellow.

Currently a librarian at a federal law enforcement agency, her work focuses on chemistry and pharmacology research, reorganizing the library’s intranet website, and creating a taxonomy of acronyms and abbreviations. Aimee is active in the DC Chapter of the Special Library Association, and co-author for the Chapter Notes bimonthly newsletter in the “Career Column”. In addition, she is involved with the Federal Armed Forces Librarians Roundtable, New Members Roundtable of the American Library Association (ALA), and the ALA Diversity Committee’s Research Grants Advisory Group. Read her full bio at http://about.me/aimeebe/bio