Military Libraries come in all shapes and sizes. We’re academic libraries, supporting Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees. We’re public libraries, complete with children’s story hours and retiree’s financial resources. We’re also other types of special libraries: medical; history; science, technology & engineering; intelligence; and headquarters support. The Military Libraries Division brings together members from all U.S. military services, Canadian Combined Armed Forces, international military services, contractors, vendors, academic institutions and anyone with an interest in military librarianship. Check us out at http://military.sla.org/. – Gloria Miller is a Librarian at the Headquarters, U.S. Army Materiel Command, Redstone Arsenal (Huntsville), Alabama. She is currently the Chair-Elect of the Military Libraries Division.

Prevention is the key to good health, both in life and in libraries. Military libraries, like so many others, are facing a future of budget cuts and it’s a reality that we will have to learn to do more with less. So, rather than waiting for the heart attack–massive budget cuts–we strive to keep our library as lean and healthy as we can.

Instead of having to go into crisis mode when the budget cuts come, we “plan for the worse” and are as proactive as possible by aggressively implementing smart process improvements using Lean Six Sigma, 5S methodology and other tools.  Since our daily work can be all-consuming (my patron needs a full literature search with 47 keywords by tomorrow!) we build continual improvement into the yearly planning.  We allot the time to analyze our systems and make the implementation of changes a priority. By planning our process improvements into the yearly plan we can project cost-savings by knowing we will have eliminated or streamlined workflow so at the end of the year if we lose 5% of our budget we have already learned to “do without.”

An example of this is how we reorganized the process for our Overdue Notices. We knew this was an opportunity for savings because it was a system that had grown unwieldy over time as technology and needs changed without the process being updated. We had to step back and look at the problem holistically to know where the improvements could be found. As a library team we designed a project with clearly assigned steps, deliverables and deadlines. We sent out a survey to our customers asking for their feedback on our borrowing policy. From those results we re-wrote our policy which allowed for extended borrowing time and, incidentally, much happier patrons! We implemented other changes, including the reporting, processing and delivery of notices and our final result was that we saved over 50 hours a month of labor!

And by being proactive instead of reactive, that means we could use that extra 50 hours to implement special projects, outreach or invest in another system analysis, but if the budget cuts at the end of the year required us to lose 50 hours a month- we would still come out healthy and alive!

Now that said, we don’t ever want the “higher ups” to think the library can indefinitely absorb budget cuts but by showing this initiative and business acumen it makes the library a stronger partner in the operation as a whole.  And it’s being that active partner, rather than a passive recipient, which helps us be future ready.

Cheryl Cyr is currently a Reference Librarian at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake Technical Library in California.

Military Libraries come in all shapes and sizes. We’re academic libraries, supporting Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees. We’re public libraries, complete with children’s story hours and retiree’s financial resources. We’re also other types of special libraries: medical; history; science, technology & engineering; intelligence; and headquarters support. The Military Libraries Division brings together members from all U.S. military services, Canadian Combined Armed Forces, international military services, contractors, vendors, academic institutions and anyone with an interest in military librarianship. Check us out at http://military.sla.org/. – Gloria Miller is a Librarian at the Headquarters, U.S. Army Materiel Command, Redstone Arsenal (Huntsville), Alabama. She is currently the Chair-Elect of the Military Libraries Division.

 
Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Blogger, LiveJournal… Social Media is everywhere, and a lot of organizations are using it, with varying success to stay connected and interact directly with patrons. But in a world of reduced budgets, and more responsibilities being spread among fewer librarians, how can we make judicious choices regarding which services to participate in, and how to update them with the most efficiency and effectiveness?

For the Combined Arms Research Library (CARL) at Fort Leavenworth, and for many other institutions, both in the government and private sector, social media has filled that gap for us. During this last winter’s extreme weather, we were able to send messages to our subscribing patrons that we were closing earlier than scheduled, or that we would not be open the following day. We can remind patrons of library events, and pass on useful or interesting links. We’ve also developed a system to ensure that we spend the least amount of time updating, but achieve maximum impact across our social media outlets of Twitter, Facebook and Blogger.

I took over the library’s social media outreach in late 2009. An interest in the technology outside of the library made me a de facto “expert.” This is probably how many librarians become in charge of various services, and our social media campaign was no different. In coming on to the project, I first evaluated our current efforts. The blog and Facebook were updated sporadically, and often with verbatim repeats of press releases. There were multiple reasons for this; updating was cumbersome for staff members who did not use Facebook or Blogger every day, and there was little time or energy in the day for putting together interesting or original content.

This is where having an interested person, dedicated to the task helped us: assigning social media to a single individual and making it a moderately high priority makes sure that it does not become just another task that it would be nice to have done, if someone could spare the concentration or time for it. As busy as most of us are, we most often can’t spare the extra time or brainpower, unless we make it a priority, with scheduled days and times that social media can be updated. I consider the time spent replying to comments and generating new content as blocking out “meeting” time with our patrons.

I also looked at Army regulations and guidance regarding social media. In the last few years, the military has taken a great interest in the power of social media and have gone to great lengths to promote its responsible use. One of the many ideas behind this is that if we are not engaging in the conversation via social media, someone else is doing it for us.

Paying attention to the larger organization’s social media guidance is extremely important. We want to always be sure that we are representing and portraying our organization correctly, and are never releasing information that our organization does not want to have passed on.

With all of this knowledge in hand, I discussed with members of my organization what we hoped to accomplish with social media. At first, our overall goals were amorphous and vague other than a general desire to update social media regularly, do more to promote our social media presence, and to gather enough information through this to reevaluate and redirect our social media efforts periodically. Setting goals, milestones and evaluation checkpoints is just as important for social media as it is for any major project to be sure it is effective and on-task, and not wasting time or energy on something that, for whatever reason, just isn’t effective.

We also decided which social media was important to us. We cut Technorati and moved away from updating Flickr. Technorati had fallen out of use since the library had setup its account, and there were other, friendlier services. We let Flickr fall by the wayside because all of our efforts were going into uploading photos to our own digital library, and uploading them to another online service seemed like an additional time-consuming step with less return than the valuable investment of time warranted.

Our blog had already been set up on Blogger, and we saw this as important not only because of it had already been established, but because blogs afford the most flexibility with expression and the transmission of information. It can allow you to provide links, photos, videos, commentary, review, original articles and a variety of other formats with the least amount of effort. We wanted to keep our Facebook ―fan‖ page as well, in part due to being already established, but also because it took even less effort than Blogger to update. Facebook was also an outlet heavily favored by the Army.

The service we took the biggest gamble on was Twitter. While the service had been around for several years in 2009, it wasn‘t as ubiquitous as Facebook or as traditional (by New Media Standards) as a blog. Growing a Twitter following takes considerable time and effort, and can backfire, if you build it, but they do not come, to paraphrase Field of Dreams.

I started by searching for other Fort Leavenworth organizations that had Twitter accounts, such as the newspaper, the Command and General Staff College, and even Morale and Welfare. I also followed other Army Twitter accounts, including the @USArmy account, and other libraries and archives. By following them, I was able to keep up with things happening on the Fort, in the Army and in librarianship. I was also able to engage in conversations with these institutions, and forward, or  “retweet” their posts (called Tweets) to Fort Leavenworth‘s following.

Some of these institutions followed us back, or announced our existence to their followers, which helped get the word out about our presence. Whenever I posted to the blog, I also posted to Twitter and Facebook to tell followers that we had a new blog entry up, complete with a link directly to the article.

We promoted heavily inside the library with cards containing our Twitter, Facebook and Blog addresses. We also got the word out on our large information screen in the lobby, and by submitting to the post-wide announcements email. Slowly, as we continued to provide original content, announcements, reminders and links to articles or websites of interest, our following grew to a level on par with the number of social media followers of other Fort Leavenworth organizations. Several of our tweets and articles about librarianship and archives were forwarded or retweeted by our followers, which increased our exposure. One blog entry was retweeted by one of the Smithsonian Twitter accounts as well, a real treat and highlight for our library. Through consistent and quality updates, we had grown our following and made it worth our time to continue with.

I had planned to work on our social media at least two days a week, every Tuesday and Friday. However, if you post all of your links, articles and information on only two days, over the course of a few hours, and “flood” your followers with information, it can overwhelm them, or cause them to tune you out. Spreading out blog posts was easy; Blogger has a feature that allows you to change the post date and time. Changing the date to a future date meant that I did not need to actually generate a post on Wednesday for one to appear. If nothing else, it looked like we were being more attentive to our social media than we actually were. The problem, however, was Twitter and Facebook, and the amount of time it took to copy and paste a blog URL or other information into each system. Not to mention the continued issue of flooding.

After trying several “apps” both for Facebook and Twitter, which would allow you to automatically update one with a post to the other, I settled on Hootsuite to manage this. It had several advantages. The first was that it only required one central login to update both services, and I could send to both services at once. There were other advantages as well. We could allow multiple “team” members to log into the library‘s account with their own individual usernames and passwords. We could also post-date Tweets and Facebook posts. I could spend an hour or two one or two days a week generating several blog posts and a handful of posts and tweets, but they would be spread across multiple days, all without me having to log back in to continue generating the content.

This sort of streamlining saved a significant amount of time and concentration. I could dedicate myself fully to the task once or twice a week, and see the rewards every single day.

Another technique that helped to reduce the amount of time I was spending on social media updates was to engage my fellow librarians to submit interesting information or blog posts on topics in which they were relative experts directly to me to be posted, so they did not need to bother logging in to anything, or worrying about formatting and posting procedures. I, on the other hand, had one less post to write. They submitted summaries of professional conferences they went to, book reviews, even information on common reference requests or helpful research links.

This technique gave staff a tiny and concise way to help with social networking that was in no way overwhelming, and allowed them to talk about something that they found personally to be interesting or fun.

As a continued way to promote our social media presence, and to make social media easier to use, I also have taught social media classes both for librarians and for our patrons. As time passes, the statistics culled via Facebook and Blogger’s tracking systems have let us see that our following, and therefore our effectiveness had continued to grow, reinforcing for us the value of popularity in our continued outreach.

We may break out into new forms of social media over time, as services rise and fall in usage. If we find our patrons are moving away from a service like Twitter and Facebook, and are moving over to a community blogging system like LiveJournal, or Tumblr, we will find ourselves going to where the people are. NPR has found success on Tumblr, and the Library of Congress has a huge collection of images available via Flickr. For now, we will just keep trying to perfect our utilization of the services that we already have.

Tammy Garrison is a digitization librarian attached to the archives and special collections department at the Combined Arms Research Library at Fort Leavenworth, KS. She has a strong interest in using digital media to connect patrons to library services and materials and believes in the power of libraries to make a difference in the lives of patrons. Library peeves include: excessive signage, dour librarians, and filing the graphic novels in the 700s.

In her free time, she teaches freshman communications courses and writes, including a comic (with Katy Shuttleworth) in the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords anthology from Mad Norwegian Press. She lives with her husband, foster dog, and six cats in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Military Libraries come in all shapes and sizes. We’re academic libraries, supporting Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees. We’re public libraries, complete with children’s story hours and retiree’s financial resources. We’re also other types of special libraries: medical; history; science, technology & engineering; intelligence; and headquarters support. The Military Libraries Division brings together members from all U.S. military services, Canadian Combined Armed Forces, international military services, contractors, vendors, academic institutions and anyone with an interest in military librarianship. Check us out at http://military.sla.org/. – Gloria Miller is a Librarian at the Headquarters, U.S. Army Materiel Command, Redstone Arsenal (Huntsville), Alabama. She is currently the Chair-Elect of the Military Libraries Division.

At Marine Corps University (MCU), Embedded Librarianship is called Direct Support. Within the past three years, this program has proved highly successful as evidenced in the growth of services, increase in the number of reference requests, and positive responses from both faculty and students. Essential to the program are e-initiatives to include e-resources, e-instruction, e-reference, and of course, e-content. Capitalizing on our virtual connections laid the foundation of direct library support, essentially creating our new dynamic duo.

“There you are, Norton. The people! Try and lick that!”

~Meet John Doe, 1941

Like the ending scene in Frank Capra‘s classic “Meet John Doe,” our people have spoken and our librarians have listened. At the Marine Corps Research Library (MCRL), patrons may access e-collections, e-services, e-programs, use e-readers and the list goes on. E-initiatives have outfitted our Direct Support Librarians with an e-arsenal letting us truly practice ‘in the field.’ As the practices have expanded, I have developed a list of lessons learned. Each lesson was an eye-opener in itself, but has proved invaluable in defining the Direct Support initiative. For those wishing to start their own programs, here are the top ten lessons I’ve learned through the privilege of serving the tough men and women of the Marine Corps.

“The most powerful weapon is the Marine mind.”

~EPME Course Card

Get to know your patrons…

Getting to know your patrons is critical. Too often we just listen to our patrons ask their questions and don‘t take the time to get to know them and how they think. As Direct Support Librarians this should be your first priority. Don‘t let traditional meetings take the place of actual communication. For faculty and staff, try to visit each staff member individually. Read the university catalog, the faculty bios and the faculty’s subject areas of interest. Set up additional times to survey their informational needs and requests. Create an email roster for keeping them apprised of new content within their subject areas. Highlight the resources that fit their areas of research. Let them know you are interested in them and what they teach and how you can assist. For our Marine students, this means asking what their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is, learning the rank structure, knowing the organizational hierarchy of the Marine Corps, finding out where they have served and what they hope to do. Listen more, talk less, take copious notes, ask questions, and in the end, you will have made lots of friends and influenced many people.

“Once a Marine, Always a Marine!”

~MSgt Paul Woyshner

Speak their language…

At MCU, Direct Support is also known as good gouge. This is a great compliment which took a lot of hard work. What‘s good gouge? It‘s military slang meaning great information. Working in an all-military environment, you must learn quickly to navigate the lingo and acronyms. This builds connections and camaraderie and when you speak the jargon, you can truly demonstrate the value and effectiveness of your library resources in ways that are meaningful for them. It’s not about the intrinsic merit of the library and what you do; it’s about making your professional resources and services relevant and translatable to your community. For example, when describing our subscription databases to a Marine who‘s MOS is in artillery, I might describe them as an informational arsenal where the journals are represented as weapon types; the idea of using only Google to search for reliable resources is like using a mortar when you really need a sniper rifle.

For a Marine who’s MOS is in aviation I might describe our website as a sort of checklist he needs to run through before he can begin his campaign analysis. One of the oft-used acronyms in the Marine Corps is MAGTF, or Marine Air Ground Task Force. A MAGTF, according to the Marines, is ‘a balanced air-ground, combined arms task organization of Marine Corps forces under a single commander that is structured to accomplish a specific mission.’ When describing the Direct Support program to the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, I likened it to a MAGTF only I called it a LAGTF, or Librarian Archivist Ground Task Force. Little connections like this go a long way to achieving relevancy within an organization.

“Each Marine is required to read the CMC’s choice “First to Fight”

by LtGen (Ret) V. Krulak.

Learn their content/curriculum…

This means spending time reviewing course material, required reading lists, professional journals, highlighting terminology, and becoming familiar with names, dates, concepts, operational terms, and acronyms. Need a crash course to catch up quickly? Ask the faculty if they might provide some of their lecture notes. I read the faculty handbooks so I understand the assignment and the learning objectives of the course director. Again, this gives you a huge advantage in assisting your students and faculty members as well as being able to anticipate their reference needs. When you have learned what the topics are and understand some of the history, relevant terms, keywords, etc., you can apply the necessary taxonomy or subject heading and open the door to more information on that topic. For example, a course card for a class on Warfighting highlights specific WWII campaigns within the Pacific theater of operations. To prepare for the students taking this class, I research the appropriate subject headings of these campaigns, possibly the call number range and the multiple names by which the campaign was known by the different services of the military to allow rapid information retrieval. You don‘t want to have your ‘weapon jam’ when you get the reference question, so arm yourself ahead of time by reading the curriculum!

“Retreat Hell! We’re just attacking in another direction.”

~Attributed to Major General Oliver P. Smith, USMC

Translate your skills with real life examples…

With all this under your belt, you can easily begin to translate your skill set into the language they speak; relevant to the material they instruct or study. Have examples ready which demonstrate the relevancy of your information to their courses or interests. Too often we have witnessed briefings from librarians showing the standard catalog or database search with no topical relevancy for the intended audience. What could be more disastrous! Match your brief to a topic under study, e.g., if the class is studying nuclear deterrent, use S.A.L.T. as your search example. If the topic is Afghanistan and humanitarian assistance, use nation-building, humanitarian intervention or military operations other than war (MOOTW). If you have a group of Marines who’ve not used a library in years, try something unconventional. Marines know combat and martial arts so it’s a safe bet they are familiar with Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee films. Relate the library resources to round house kicks and the databases as digital kung fu. Take it further by demonstrating access via your BlackBerry or iPhone. The results will be rewarding every time.

“You don’t hurt ‘em if you don’t hit ‘em.”

~Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC

Keep it relevant and concise…

Librarians love to talk about information literacy. We want the whole world to know what we have! Frankly, I’d hire a band and fly a banner 24/7 – 365 if I could; however, there is a time and place for this. Introducing library research is not the best time to veer off into metrics and metadata; you will have glazed looks and Marines who never come back. You have to keep it tight and relevancy is always key. In other words get to the point! Marines call this squared away, the opposite being a ‘soup sandwich’ which paints quite a picture. Now, should they require more, that’s easily accommodated, but until that happens, rein it in. You want to win friends and influence people, not destroy them via death by PowerPoint. Use your e-platforms to have instructional material available for them to use at their convenience like online tutorials, instructional videos or discussion boards. This meets a variety of user needs quickly and succinctly.

“Being ready is not what matters. What matters is winning after you get there.”

~Lieutenant General Victor H. Krulak, USMC

Meet them where they are; don’t wait for them to come to you!

Meeting them where they are is critical. Depending on your patrons’ comfort level in the library, you may have to be very proactive. For Marines, they respect action so take your laptop and set up shop like the proverbial Lucy with your ‘Dr. Is In’ sign and greet them with a smile and a clear, confident look in the eye. Knock on doors; stick your head in a meeting if you need to. Let them know your intent is serious; it’s not a waste of their time and it costs them nothing. This is the part that will be hard for those of us who are not really social. Imagine a room full of Marines and it’s doubly hard! You must force yourself out of your comfort zone and be available. After all, how else will your build your support? This is easier nowadays with e-initiatives to support all type of requests for information via email, IM or text. However, nothing can replace the value of personal interaction. It shows you are willing to make the time and put in the effort.

“I have just returned from visiting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world.”

~General Douglas MacArthur

Stop talking at them; let them do it!

There is an old Chinese proverb that states, “Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand.” Once you have successfully launched your Direct Support efforts, let your patrons work through some scenarios. No one likes to be briefed to death; instead try finding ways to get them involved. For Marines, this is essential as they are all about action; let them lock-n-load! Having them perform allows for the ‘aha’ moment of understanding especially when you need them to make connections and remember essential information. Consequently, I have shortened my presentation time to include instructional examples our Marines can work through via our guidance the first time they visit the library for their introduction. The goal is to have them familiar with the best of our website and resources during this intro by having them navigate through it. I liken this exercise to what Marines call LandNav or ‘land navigation’ only in this instance, the landnav instruction guides them through the library resources.

“If I had one more division like this First Marine Division I could win this war.”

~General Douglas MacArthur in Korea

Share, share and share some more…

Once you have this underway, your task is to share with the rest of the library world and shout it out loud! We are the collective brain of our profession and we are only as good as the knowledge we share with one another. How many of us have lamented working long hours on something only to find out it’s been done and hey, they have an app for that. Let’s help each other out and share our hard earned knowledge. Hopefully, your patrons will help with this process too. I know Marines have a good gouge network and word of mouth within a small organization can take you far. Encourage the sharing with your patrons and within your communities. We can all benefit.

“I am convinced that there is no smarter, handier, or more adaptable body of troops in the world.”

~Prime Minister of Britain, Sir Winston Churchill

Don’t be afraid to try new tricks…

Ah yes, trying new tricks. This makes everyone shudder. You mean I have to do what? How? When? Get over yourself! I’m not suggesting anyone form ‘circles of trust’ or join the martial arts training with Marines. But reaching your patrons does mean trying new stuff. We have all these new e-tools at the ready. Add them into your bag of tricks and make them work for you and your patrons. Also, consider lightening up. It’s ok to laugh at yourself. Our stereotype can be used for good here! Often, I start my opening briefs with Marines by highlighting that we are not the typical ‘shushing’ librarians but we will give the WWF smack down to Marines who talk on their cell phones while in the Reference area. This always draws smiles, lets them relax and the connection is made. Exploit, recreate and reconnect! It should be fun for all, after all, everyone has a job to do but not everyone looks for the fun in it.

“A ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons.”

~Admiral David D. Porter

Have back up for your back up…

Finally, you must have backup. For Marines this means having a COA, military jargon for a course of action, and Marines always have three options. Technology is great and e-readers are phenomenal but when it fails, don‘t be left with egg on your face. Have a COA and continue the work demonstrating the capability and flexibility you have. Remember that dynamic duo of Direct Support and e-initiatives? Well here’s a real-life COA in action for the online bibliographic tool Refworks. First, I decided to have three presentation types as my COA’s: One that was in PowerPoint format, one a live demonstration, and one in print in case the first two were not an option due to technical difficulties. The first COA, the PowerPoint brief, was my backup for the live demo and had all my notes, tips and tricks plus had the necessary screen shots should I have technical difficulties. The second COA, the live demo, was my preference as it lets student follow along and we practice together; plus, I could answer questions on the spot by illustrating how to perform certain actions. Additionally, I practiced on a mobile device to demonstrate another e-platform of value and capture the Marines who prefer the less traditional approach to Refworks. The third COA, the print version was an official Refworks 101 brochure that offered step-by-step instructions on getting started. This is ideal for Marines who could not attend, or preferred printed materials. What were the results? I had a few technical issues with the live demo, which allowed me to use the canned version to illustrate with a screen shot. Then I had several questions concerning access and mobile devices which was perfect as I had already prepped for this by using the mobile e-platform in practice. Additionally, the brochures served as backup for my backup, as I discovered more than half the Marines wanted those for further assistance. Consequently, I had more requests for the RefWorks tutorial that year than ever before.

Lessons Learned: Be ready for anything, and most importantly be ready to say, “Yes, I’d be happy to help with that.” An informal motto of the Marines is to improvise, adapt and overcome. Marines do it every day and so can you. They will respect you for it and remember you walked the walk.

Rachel S. Kingcade is the Chief Reference and Command and Staff College (CSC) Direct Support Librarian for Marine Corps University, Quantico VA and has held that position since August 2008. As CSC Direct Support Librarian, Rachel works with over two hundred CSC students instructing on information literacy through multiple briefings, workshops and brownbags. Rachel received her MLIS from the University of South Carolina, while also working in reference services for both the USC and Beaufort County Library systems. Rachel did her undergraduate work in English and Communications, receiving BAs for both from Bluffton University, while participating in two international exchange programs with universities in Northern Ireland and Poland. Rachel is an active member of Military Librarians Division of SLA. In her free time, Rachel enjoys many outdoor sports including running, hiking, wakeboarding, snowboarding and swimming.

Military Libraries come in all shapes and sizes. We’re academic libraries, supporting Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees. We’re public libraries, complete with children’s story hours and retiree’s financial resources. We’re also other types of special libraries: medical; history; science, technology & engineering; intelligence; and headquarters support. The Military Libraries Division brings together members from all U.S. military services, Canadian Combined Armed Forces, international military services, contractors, vendors, academic institutions and anyone with an interest in military librarianship. Check us out at http://military.sla.org/. — Gloria Miller is a Librarian at the Headquarters, U.S. Army Materiel Command, Redstone Arsenal (Huntsville), Alabama. She is currently the Chair-Elect of the Military Libraries Division

“[t]he Army must continually adapt to changing conditions and evolving threats to our security. An essential part of that adaptation is the development of new ideas to address future challenges.”

Army Operating Concept 2010

“The Army Learning Concept 2015 is an important component of our effort to drive change through a campaign of learning. It describes the learning environment we envision in 2015. It seeks to improve our learning model by leveraging technology without sacrificing standards so we can provide credible, rigorous, and relevant training and education for our force of combat seasoned Soldiers and leaders. It argues that we must establish a continuum of learning from the time Soldiers are accessed until the time they retire. It makes clear that the responsibility for developing Soldiers in this learning continuum is a shared responsibility among the institutional schoolhouse, tactical units, and the individuals themselves.”

TRADOC Pam 525-8-2, 20 Jan 2011, Army Learning Concept, forward, p. i.

Like most American institutions, the U.S. Army is in flux. Ten years of war, now in three theaters, has changed attitudes about what the institution needs to do to remain viable, relevant, and dominant. Librarians have a part of that discussion. We need to remain viable, relevant, and useful to decision-makers, or we will be replaced by Bing.

So, in the spirit of General (ret) Shinsheki*, I propose a set of development points that are going to be vital for military librarians to navigate through over the next few years. Some are broad issues in the library profession that are being played out in the military microcosm; others are specific to the milieu. Surmounting the challenges below will require all our technical and managerial skills. We can surmount all of them, but not by huddling in our bunkers. Librarians have changed with the profession, and we can continue to deal with rapid and disorienting change.

Libraries have changed more during my 40-year career than in the previous thousand years. Is that great, or what? It‘s a good day to be a librarian.

Ten points of conflict for the military librarian of the next decade:

1. Libraries must welcome mobile devices. This should surprise no one. It‘s a reasonable assumption that every soldier has, or soon will have, a smart phone in his or her pocket. Will libraries be on speed-dial? Can libraries provide timely, relevant information quickly and easily, often without human intervention? Can libraries do that for a dispersed, harried, overworked, very determined clientele? Mobile accessibility is more critical to our survival with each passing year.
2. Libraries, particularly the school libraries, must encourage alumni queries, not limit their work to current students. As learning trends more toward the lifelong model, we will see a wider spectrum of soldiers accessing our resources. Can a deployed Staff Sergeant find the current doctrine on developing training strategies in Central Africa? Can faculty find usable, relevant vignettes on command relationships? Our ability to deal with diverse customers and subjects must improve.
3. Guard and Reserve students need access from their homes/armories. At my institution, we have about two thousand resident students, and at least triple that in distance education programs. Are those citizen soldiers served? Do they even know you exist?
4. More and more, as managers we find ourselves embroiled in licenses and contracting minutiae. This will not get easier! Information aggregators and vendors will demand payment for their services, will require you to define your audience, and will increasingly place restrictions on the use, re-use, and transfer of their products. We‘ll have to mediate these licenses in an increasingly chaotic contracting and copyright environment.
5. Management must be aware of library service requirements to residents and non-residents alike. This is something we should be doing all the time—making the bosses understand we provide a useful service. If they don‘t understand that, libraries will vanish. This isn‘t new, just continuing librarian responsibility. Educating your management is vital. Google may not kill the library, but senior managers who think Google can replace you, will.
6. ILS are swiftly becoming obsolete. Web discovery systems are evolving quickly. Competing systems are cropping up in all directions. The idea of a specialized, expensive, labor-intensive tool that only displays the tiny percentage of your library’s assets is a nineteenth-century artifact. That’s not to say we can give up on cataloging books and maintaining inventory control. But we have to make it easier for folks to use our stuff.
7. As with all levels of American society, military librarians must beware the Google-Wikipedia quick simple answer trap. Educating your clients about sources and provenance will serve them well all their lives.
8. Conflicts between public release, unclassified but sensitive, and classified research are making life harder. Rules on operational security and Personally Identifiable Information are changing daily, often in bizarre ways. They are a fact of life, and a source of much pain.
9. Education vs. training will be a constant friction point in military school systems, curricula, and civilian degree-granting institutions. Does the curriculum provide direct proficiency in a series of tasks, or does it broadly prepare soldiers and family members to respond in intelligent, knowledgeable ways to unexpected events?
10. Copyright is becoming increasingly Byzantine and time-consuming; librarians by default become copyright cops. Lawyers involve themselves in the minutiae of posting anything on the Web.

* “If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.”

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.

by Clara Cabrera, New York Chapter, Leadership & Management Division

So how does someone starting her second career and new to the library profession get to the best seat in the house of the SLA annual conference? This is how I got there along with some of my thoughts on being “Future Ready.” Prior to 2009, I was working for a small financial publishing company, having spent 2007-2009 working full time and attending graduate school to obtain my Master’s degree. Scheduling and finances being what they were for me, attending a library conference was difficult to swing. I did hear and read about friends and colleagues attending conferences and knew I was missing out on a great experience.

After being an active officer of the SLA student chapter at Pratt, I became actively involved in roles at SLA-NY. I attended local chapter events; I even organized a few events and meet many fellow information professionals along the way. I was nominated for the 2011 Rising Star award – an award that five new information professionals from across all the chapters receive. For the record, the best part of receiving this award is that I was nominated by people that I have worked alongside as a volunteer. None of the activities I have been a part of could have been successful without the parts played by so many others. The award provides entrance to the full SLA conference and an awards ceremony at the opening events of the conference, and the award winners each take part in a panel of fellow Rising Stars and newly inducted SLA Fellows.

The panel discussed the four pillars of Cindy Romaine’s concept of “Future Ready” – described on the Future Ready Blog as:

Collaboration to accelerate the availability of useful information
Adaptable skill set that anticipates and responds to the evolving marketplace
Alignment with the language and values of the community you serve
Community that connects stakeholders in mutually beneficial relationships

Working with Webb Shaw, Director of Editorial Resources of J.J. Keller – sponsor of the Rising Star Award – each of the Rising Stars were paired with a Fellow and we discussed how the elements of being “Future Ready” relate to our experiences in the profession. Leoma Dunn, of the Kentucky SLA chapter, and I paired up to discuss Collaboration.

Since we discussed how these pillars were part of our professional experience as new and veteran professionals, I’ll briefly mention the comments we made in discussing Collaboration. Since I think my biography reads of my collaboration in this field, it was fairly straightforward for me to discuss how collaboration played a part in my professional development. In my graduate years I found collaboration opportunities in both informal classmate study groups and student associations/groups. Collaboration is evident in my current work place

• in intra-departmental communication and reference tracking tools, such as email and SharePoint;
• in departments within the same branch of our corporate organizational structure (Technical Services, Knowledge Management, Content Management);
• with other firm departments, such as Business Development, Legal Talent recruitment, and Information Technology groups;
• with suppliers/vendors; and, of course,
• with the End User.

In the professional arena my collaboration experience has been in professional associations (SLA and others) and within informal meet-ups of professional people who share the same information professional space, but may differ in the job titles or firm in which we work. It also extends to the professional literature which I see as the “published format of collaboration” in which we follow and find out what other professionals are doing in the field (such as blog commenting or letters to the editors for print publications).

My panel partner Leoma discussed her own unique experience as President of the Kentucky Library Association, which includes public, school media, special, and academic librarians, and how the collaboration of these varied libraries help with each library’s own issues. Leoma works in the academic setting and has found that the nature of academic culture, where you have to present and work with others as part of your job, is more open, inclusive and naturally lends itself to collaboration.

Both Leoma and I referenced a great transcript (found on the CEO’s Corner page of SLA.org) of Janice LaChance’s presentation on collaboration at the ICAL conference in Delhi, India, in 2009. I recommend everyone read this speech. LaChance provides specific examples of collaboration at work in several U.S. library environments that really informed our understanding of collaboration at the larger multi-institutional level.

I enjoyed my participation in the panel on being “Future Ready”: meeting some of the other great new professional talent in the field, and the veteran knowledge workers that I had the honor of sharing the table with. Since the panel took place fairly early on in the course of the multi-day conference, I spent the bulk of my first time conference experience popping in and out of various sessions that piqued my interest, and vendor sponsored events that highlighted some upgrades to their products. Overall, I had a wonderful learning experience, and look forward to future conferences.

I could not have had these great experiences without SLA and J.J. Keller, the award sponsor of the 2011 Rising Star award. I owe a great thanks to SLA New York Chapter for nominating me for the Rising Star award and for also awarding me with a chapter scholarship to attend the SLA Conference. Thank you.

This article was was published in the Fall 2011 Newsletter of the New York Chapter of the Special Libraries Association.

Clara Cabrera is a Research and Reference Specialist for the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr. Clara received her MLIS from Pratt Institute in 2009. An active member of the SLA–New York chapter, she has previously held the Library School Liaison and Joblog Coordinator positions. Clara was awarded the 2011 Rising Star award by SLA.

by Dennie Heye, Europe Chapter, Petroleum & Energy Resources Division

Information professionals usually don’t think of marketing themselves as a big issue. We know we are the key to accessing information; we are service- and customer-oriented; we know our business – so, customers will just come to us, right?

To become future ready, we need to market ourselves – not just to be known, but also to let our customers know who we are and what we can do to help them. Here, I share my experiences with marketing myself successfully as an information professional, both inside and outside my organization.

Promoting my services portfolio

I work in a large, multinational company, so a lot of my clients are not in the same building – or even on the same continent. To be noticed, I have set up a short, informative web page about my services on our intranet.

I spend time every day browsing and reading internal discussion forums, and try to participate in discussions by providing references, pointing to online and offline sources, or suggesting that I set up a literature search for participants. At the bottom of each of my replies is a pointer to my services web site.

Participate in Client Meetings

Besides participating in virtual discussions and collaboration areas, I block time in my calendar every week to attend team meetings and stay up to date with my clients’ work. I try to be proactive in supplying information, or to suggest training for relevant online and offline sources.

When possible, I scan and browse relevant industry journals related to my clients’ business. This way I pick up trends, pointers to relevant publications, plus, I learn their jargon. By being able to speak my clients’ language, or at least show that I am interested in their world, I am taken seriously.

Clear Message

During all my communications, whether through a PowerPoint presentation, a web site or a face-to-face meeting with a new client, I always try to be clear on the services I provide. I emphasize my key advantages as a literature searcher: I have access to a variety of quality information; a wide network; professional knowledge of interviewing, searching and dissemination; and last, but not least, I can provide better information faster and cheaper. Honesty is also something I emphasize – I do not promise what I cannot deliver, even though there sometimes is pressure to do so. On an annual basis, via an anonymous feedback form, I ask my clients to provide comments on my services. This provides me with new ideas for improvement. To get more feedback on my professional performance, I ask trusted colleagues (from different departments) to tell me honestly what they think of my services or approach.

One book which I consider to be very clear and helpful on this topic is Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith (New York: Warner Books, 1997), which will help you think about marketing both your services and yourself.

Dennie Heye is a global knowledge manager at a global energy firm in the Netherlands, working on knowledge management and enterprise social media. That said, he is still able to dress himself and carry out simple tasks.

A longer version of this article was originally published in Info Career Trends.

by Jim DelRosso, New York – Upstate Chapter, Academic Division

A digital repository is just an empty box; Amy Buckland said it, and it’s the truth. You can dress it up, debate issues of metadata and organization, but when it comes down to it your digital repository is just a container for digital objects. It’s just an empty box.

So is this:

Copyright © Bill Watterson and Universal Press Syndicate.

What matters is what you do with it, what sparks the imagination of you and your peers and your patrons and what drives action. If the repository stays an empty box, communicated about only in terms obscure to your patrons and pitched to them as one more obligation in a life filled with obligations, they’ll treat it like just so much cardboard.

But when you show it to them as a means to preserve their legacy, share their work with audiences who will value it, and create the kinds of collections they wished existed, then you will inspire them. Together, you will do things that once you could not have imagined.

As we strive to be future ready, we must remember that unless we connect a new application or technology to our patrons’ lives, it will remain at best a shiny bauble, briefly smiled at and then discarded. We’ll jump from trademarked buzzword to trademarked buzzword, effecting no change beyond the apps list of our smartphone.

But if we know our patrons, and make sure they know us, and partner with them to use every resource at our disposal to make their library experiences better, we won’t just be ready for the future: we will create it.

Jim DelRosso is the Digital Projects Coordinator at the Catherwood Library at Cornell University. He has been a member of SLA for several years, and is the Communications & Social Media Chair for the SLA Academic Division. He blogs at The Nascent Librarian.

by Pierina Parise, Director, Oregon Distance Education Program, Emporia State University, School of Library & Information Management (Oregon Chapter)

I am often asked about the qualities/characteristics that are essential for admission into our MLS program.  I usually reply with the list that appears on our Web site:

• Fluency in oral and written communication;
• An assertive personality, one that is sensitive and responsive to the needs of others;
• Emotional maturity and stability;
• An ability to articulate personal goals;
• Intellectual curiosity and flexibility necessary for creative problem solving and application of theory to practice;
• An appreciation for large and small group participation;
• Awareness of change, ambiguity and risk taking;
• A positive attitude toward utilization of technology; and
• Strong interest in contributing to SLIM, the information profession, and to society.

We still do think the above traits will help one be successful in our program, but I would like to turn this around and ask what qualities – as opposed to skills – will enable someone to be successful in our profession?

The reason I ask this question is that I think in our current economic environment – when an agency will often receive hundreds of highly (maybe overly) skilled applicants for a job opening – it is often certain attitudes and personality characteristics that will be the deciding points in the final selection. I also suspect that we do not openly acknowledge or perhaps even realize that we are basing our choice on traits that are so difficult to assess or quantify.

If you are on a search committee, what “qualities” do you look for in an applicant? And how would you try to ascertain these characteristics?

Pierina Parise has been the Director of the Oregon Distance Education Program for Emporia State University’s School of Library and Information Management for the past twelve years.  Before that she was the Instruction Librarian and Head of Reference at Marylhurst University.  She received her MLS from the University of Hawaii and worked in Hawaii at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and was also branch head of a combined school and public library on the Big Island.

by Dr. Sandra Hirsh, Silicon Valley Chapter, Leadership & Management Division

Tomorrow’s information professionals, who are in graduate school today, need to be ready for the rapid changes facing our profession. When they complete their degrees, will they be prepared to enter a profession that’s evolving so quickly? I encourage students (and those who mentor them) to start thinking creatively and flexibly about future career opportunities as early as possible in their graduate program.

Today’s MLIS students need to think broadly about their skillset and how they can apply their knowledge to a wide range of career pathways. LIS professionals have valuable and unique skills that are in growing demand, yet many of today’s students don’t recognize the value of an MLIS degree. During their MLIS program, students should take the time to network with faculty members, practitioners, and industry leaders, who can inspire them to think more broadly about the range of career opportunities for tomorrow’s LIS professionals.

Students need to be strategic as they choose their courses, thinking about how the knowledge they gain in graduate school can help them pursue tomorrow’s jobs. They should take advantage of their program’s academic advising and career development tools, and read blogs about emerging trends for LIS jobs. As our field is quite broad, before selecting courses, students need to understand the relevance of specific electives to potential career pathways they may want to pursue. Students should also complete an internship, where they can make connections with practitioners, gain real-world experience, and see how their skills can be applied in a variety of professional settings.

I also think it’s critical for today’s MLIS students to be comfortable exploring and adapting to new technology, as technology will continue to play an important role in our profession. Students should seek out opportunities to use technology in their learning activities. For example, students should be comfortable using web conferencing, blogs, wikis, and social networking sites. They should make it a priority to explore how technology is impacting our profession so they emerge from graduate school ready to share their ideas with their employers.

Today’s MLIS students also need to develop a lifelong learning community, made up of a diverse group of colleagues, who are eager to collaborate and explore solutions to changing priorities. While still in school, students should take time to build their professional network. One way this can be accomplished is through participation in professional associations, including student chapters based at their university.

In the past, attending professional conferences has posed challenges because of difficulties getting time off work and affording travel expenses. However, many professional conferences are now offered virtually, opening up new opportunities to get involved in conference planning, presentations, and networking. For example, the upcoming Library 2.011 worldwide virtual conference in November will bring together a global audience to explore how the digital age is impacting the roles libraries and librarians play in how we learn and consume information. These types of conferences provide excellent venues for students to get involved in the professional community and learn about new trends in our field.

It’s an exciting time to be preparing tomorrow’s information professionals. I look forward to feedback from any of you who would like to engage in further dialogue about how MLIS programs can help today’s students be future ready.

Sandra Hirsh is Professor and Director of the School of Library and Information Science at San José State University. Prior to joining the School as Director, she worked in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade at major technology companies: Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. As an industry user experience researcher, leader, and manager, she contributed to R&D research projects and influenced the user experience of web, mobile, and TV consumer products resulting in 5 U.S. patents. She was previously an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, and has taught courses for San José State University and the University of Washington.

The Challenge of Information Overload & the Opportunity of Abundance

by Charlie Davidson, CEO, Attensa

In Part I of this post, I called out the “Opportunity for Information Professionals in an era of Information Abundance.”  I also explored the many challenges created by the ubiquity of information and why traditional information services and tools struggle to address the problems and opportunities of information abundance. Chiefly, this struggle occurs because current information gathering and delivery tools were designed in and for a paradigm of information scarcity rather than information abundance.

In conjunction with this shift from scarcity to abundance, the role of information professionals is evolving as well. Alexander Feng, director, strategic research at the dd+p group and chairman of the Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Division at SLA, offers a wonderful perspective on this in his essay “Corporate Librarian 2.0: New Core Competencies” (PDF). He observes, “the core role of information specialists is changing from information gatekeeper to information guru.” Feng believes this can empower librarians to become both “information enablers” and “knowledge creators.”

Information professionals are uniquely positioned for this important new role by virtue of understanding myriad information sources and how information maps to organizational objectives. What is missing, however, are the processes and enabling technologies to empower them.

The best part of this evolution is that it does not require radical changes to company processes or worker behavior. The basic notion is to implement a simple framework with four essential elements:

• An aggregation engine that unites digital sources inside and outside the organization.
• An automated way to rapidly capture and organize information into topics relevant to the organization and its people.
• Content delivery options that span offices, geographies, viewing devices and more.
• Analytics that report how information is being consumed to drive content recommendations and purchasing decisions.

These elements are described in the graphic below.

These four elements form the foundation of a solution that is robust enough to deliver on the promise of exploiting the abundance of information available today — and capitalize on the changes to come. These innovations will bring immediate value to your organization by extracting new and untapped value from the information already flowing through it. You can learn more about this here.

A question I often get asked is: “How do information professionals get started sponsoring these needed changes?”

Here is the good news! The business justification for these projects and the ROI are straightforward and provide impact across different roles in the organization. You will find many friends and supporters to help make your business case. In our work with customers across various industries, common interests have emerged between information professionals, knowledge management professionals, marketing and sales operations, CIOs and senior technology professionals.

Effective information management generally goes to the heart of many corporate initiatives and the connections between your initiative and other roles in the organization will be mutually beneficial. For example, knowledge management professionals gain insights into the intellectual assets of the organization and are able to effectively connect people, information and processes. CIOs and technologists harvest greater value from existing technology and communication assets. Marketing and sales operations professionals can grow revenue more effectively and empower better customer relationships.

Of course, the ultimate value accrues when the people across the organization receive more relevant and timely information about the topics that matter to them so they can find prospects, monitor competitors or industries and keep clients satisfied.

Charlie Davidson is the CEO of Attensa, an enterprise software company solving the problem of information overload for businesses and professionals. He serves on the Steering Committee for the Information Overload Research Group and is also a member of the Oregon and Washington State Bar Associations. Charlie can be reached at charlie.davidson@attensa.com on Twitter @CharlieDavidson or  at +1 971.340.2000 ext. 100.