by Christine Hamilton-Pennell, Rocky Mountain Chapter, Competitive Intelligence and Taxonomy Divisions

Associating with entrepreneurs is energizing! I have spent much of the last eight years working with entrepreneurs of all stripes. My definition of an entrepreneur is “someone who perceives an opportunity and creates and grows an organization to pursue it”—whether a for-profit business or a social enterprise. Some of these folks have been wildly successful, while others have struggled and some have experienced dramatic failures.

Based upon the encounters I’ve had with successful entrepreneurs, I have identified several characteristics and habits of mind they exhibit that I believe we as information professionals can incorporate into our own thinking:

1. They are optimistic—sometimes to a fault. They are confident that they can change the world and create a successful venture.
2. They are persistent. If one avenue, approach or method doesn’t work, or if they run into roadblocks, they look for alternatives. They don’t take “no” for an answer.
3. They constantly look for ways to innovate in the products and services they offer, their distribution channels, and their avenues for marketing. They look for niches and gaps in the market—customer needs that no one else is filling.
4. They take calculated risks, weighing the insights derived from both their intuition and analytical reasoning before making business decisions. This is what Roger Martin calls “abductive reasoning” in his book, Design of Business (Harvard University Press, 2009).
5. They recognize the importance of building a good leadership team, one that possesses the complementary suite of skills required to successfully run their business or enterprise.
6. They recognize that they cannot succeed alone. They are not threatened by collaboration, and actively seek out strategic partnerships. They see the value of teaming up with “competitors” and others in their industry space—creating a “team of rivals”—in order to construct a stronger value proposition in the marketplace and create a win-win scenario for all involved.
7. They spend time both working in the business (doing the essential work of the enterprise) and working on the business—exploring new opportunities and developing the processes and strategies required for future growth.
8. If their initiatives fail—even miserably—they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and say, “Well, I learned that next time I will try this instead…”

Thinking like an entrepreneur is about having “internal locus of control,” a psychological construct that refers to the practice of looking at what you have control over, and how to change it, rather than focusing on external factors and playing the victim.

An example in the library world of an entrepreneurial thinker is Sara Jones, director of the Carson City (Nevada) Library. She and her deputy director, Tammy Westergard, have created partnerships with business and economic development entities across the city and have made significant contributions to the city’s economic revitalization. Through their initiatives, the city created a Business Research Innovation Center that houses city business offices, business service providers, the local arts agency, and a business research center run by the library. I have written about her efforts on my blog, http://bit.ly/kWaBtw, and also included the case study in my e-book, Creating an Entrepreneur-Friendly Public Library, http://bit.ly/jIFQxp.

Special librarians and independent information professionals already understand that they need to demonstrate their value to their parent organization and clients. And there is no question that we are experiencing challenging times in our profession. But an additional shot of entrepreneurial thinking can help us develop a level of confidence and creativity that allows us to see these challenges as opportunities. We can identify niches that no one else is filling. We can team up with unlikely partners to expand our reach and impact. We can innovate by offering new products and services. Like a successful entrepreneur, we can learn to say, “What if…?” and “Why not…?” and know that we really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Christine Hamilton-Pennell, Growing Local Economies, Inc., is a librarian and information professional who currently spends her time consulting and training in communities and libraries across the country to support local economic and entrepreneurship development efforts. She can be reached at christine@growinglocaleconomies.com.

by Justin Yuen, Oregon Chapter, Knowledge Management Division

We live in the information age. A multitude of data streams to us in emails, text messages, instant messages, voicemails, blogs, status updates, and tweets. Still more data exists in endless shared drive folders, magazines, newspapers, books, TV, videos, iPods and smart phones.

How do we make sense of it all? Simply, we do it by being human and getting a little help from our friends at work, and friends at home.

In this never-ending universe of information, we reach out a helping hand to people around us. We recommend articles. We tell people we “like” what they’ve shared. We carry on a dialogue about topics of the day, or post questions that trigger immediate answers.

Over the past several years, collaboration has shifted dramatically from being document or data centric to people centric. Trusted advice or a quick take on complex issues are just a friend away. Technology has not only made the world of information a smaller place; it’s strengthened and broadened our social networks to help make sense of the world.

What does this mean for you as a knowledge management professional?

The importance of people who facilitate collaboration and forge connections to relevant content is critical to our knowledge economy. When it comes down to it, an organization is more than the products or services it produces. It is about the depth of its social network, breadth of knowledge, and the speed by which it can bring its ideas to market.

You are the catalyst to helping your organization make the shift from document or data centric to people centric. The solutions you bring today need to deliver strong social networks, a nimble way for people to share content everyday, and a faster fast for making dreams come true to make the world a better place. It’s time to be powered by human energy.

Justin Yuen is President of FMYI [for my innovation], a social collaboration software company with a commitment to the triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit). Prior to starting FMYI, Justin had a seven year international career at Nike which involved aspects of knowledge management each step of the way. He has been involved with SLA since presenting on best practices in emerging web technologies at an Oregon Special Libraries Association meeting last year.  You can read more at http://www.fmyi.com/company/team_page_content/

by Connie Crosby, Toronto Chapter, KM, Legal, Taxonomy and Leadership & Management Divisions

We have a big opportunity to use our skills in initiatives beyond the library, to contribute to teams that bring together a range of skills. In the book The New Polymath (http://www.thenewpolymath.com/), Vinnie Mirchandani describes teams made up of experts with a range of backgrounds coming together to innovate in ways not previously seen.

Becoming an independent consultant has been an eye-opening experience for me. I work with teams of extremely smart, insightful people working with information who come from a range of backgrounds, not just library. By contrast, I find so often librarians want to hold ourselves apart as “us” versus “them” (librarians versus non-librarians) but really, it should just be “us”.  We are all on the same side, working toward the same goals.

And I am starting to take exception to those who try to hold librarians as somehow special. Distinct perhaps, yes, but not somehow better than others. In the process of justifying our place in the universe, I fear that librarians—primarily in the United States and Canada where we do not have licensing in our profession—have inadvertently excluded others in our workplaces and industries who we really should be respecting, working with, and learning from.

Many Library Technicians have horror stories about the difficulties they have faced in working with “MLS’s”, often times being passed over for jobs or promotions, or doing the same work as an MLS but with lower pay. So much of what we know in the library industry is learned on the job, that I often wonder how this can be. I think back to my own library school education a number of years ago: while I learned a lot at the time, very little of it today resembles my working reality, and very little of the program resembles today’s program. I can’t help but think that, once we have been in the working environment for a number of years, the experience counts for so much more.

We also often forget there are others in the information world, many of whom are also without the MLS degree: researchers, information consultants, information architects, knowledge managers, records managers, user experience specialists, indexers and taxonomists among others. While those with library degrees often excel in these areas, they are not prerequisites for success in the job. Since leaving the library workplace for consulting, I have come across and worked with so many different types of people, many who (much to my surprise) know an awful lot about information.

We do not own this, folks.

I therefore have a difficult time understanding the elitist mindset of some librarians. I do realize that in an economic downturn when we are all struggling to keep a roof over our heads, the effort to survive forces us to find ways to distinguish ourselves, and promoting our degrees over others’ is one way we often do this.

However, we need to keep in mind that different skill sets and personalities on our teams contribute to successful projects. I believe we can also learn a lot from one another, and have always benefited from working with others of backgrounds different from our own. If we are all going to work together, we need to be mindful and respectful of one another.

I know we fear losing our identities as librarians. But I am here to tell you: fear not!  Your paranoia is not justified! There is such a great opportunity here for learning from others. For while we learn from others, and treat them with respect, they learn from us and hopefully show us increased respect as well.

I know that when I tell people I am an information management consultant, their eyes glaze over. When I tell them I am a consultant with law librarian training, it suddenly captures their imagination and they have an instant vision of how I might help them. And when I work on projects with other consultants, they have an appreciation for my background and what I can bring to the project.

I am proud of my library degree, and continue to identify myself as a librarian. But, having worked as a technician in the past and working as an information consultant now, I can see that putting ourselves into an ivory tower is such a mistake. Exclusivity does not help us become stronger.

I would love for us to embrace the other information professionals out there, and have us welcome them into SLA more than we are doing now. It would enrich our own experience so much, bringing fresh viewpoints and ideas into our divisions and chapters. And it would give them a way to learn from us (i.e. librarians) as well.

And in your own working life, I encourage you to look beyond the physical limits of the library, and put yourself forward to participate on teams that might normally be outside your realm. They need you. And, you need them.

Photo credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Rich Vintage Photography

Connie Crosby is a consultant specializing in library management, information management, knowledge management, and social media inside the enterprise. Before consulting, she was a law library manager for 10 years in a Toronto law firm. Connie is a founding director and contributor for the co-operative law blog Slaw.ca and also writes for her own blog at http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com. She is an instructor with the iSchool Institute at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, teaching continuing education courses on social media and an  organizer of PodCamp Toronto, a gathering of social media professionals and enthusiasts in Canada, co-organizer of Knowledge Workers Toronto, a monthly meetup group. Her 2010 book Effective Blogging for Libraries is part of the Tech Set series from Neal-Schuman Publishers.

by Chelle Batchelor, past SLA-UW Student Chapter Member

In late April I had the honor and pleasure of teaming up with SLA President Cindy Romaine to present this talk on the Future Ready Job Search at an SLA-UW Student Night event. As soon as she explained to me the Future Ready concept, I started thinking about how the key components of collaboration, flexibility, adaptability, and community could be applied to the difficult job search we all experience after we graduate with our MLIS degrees. Here are just a few ideas for a Future Ready inspired job search, but please feel free to add more!

Community: it is crucially important to actively reach out to your community of practice while you are in graduate school, and afterward as well. If you are reading this, you’ve already started! The key word here, however, is active, and I think people sometimes miss that when they receive (or give) advice like this. So, you are reading Future Ready 365. Great! But, can you do more? Post something, perhaps? Here’s another example: many people attend large professional conferences as part of their job search, which can be mind-boggling and sometimes even end up feeling like a waste of time and money. The key is, it is very important to get actively involved in the conference in any way you can! Find a way to volunteer, present a poster, or join a committee or peer group as well as attending a career fair or resume review. You can then note your achievements on your resume, and you will be interfacing directly with professionals who might have helpful career advice or leads! The important thing is to find meaningful ways to connect with your community.

Collaboration: I think community and collaboration go hand in hand. By connecting with the community of practice that has evolved around the kind of work you want to do, you will discover peers and mentors who can help you with your job search. Ask your peers to review your application materials, or form a job search support group to trade resumes and share ideas about how to represent your skills. Brainstorm with your peers to help each other think of skills you have gained through your coursework. Ask your mentors for advice on where to search for jobs, what to include in your application, or how you might broaden your job search strategy if you have run out of ideas. Finally, keep your peers in mind when you are searching for jobs. For example, when you see a position that you don’t think is the right fit for you, take the extra step to share it with a friend who might be more interested!

Flexibility: this one is probably the most important, and the most difficult. In my presentation I represented the problem as a Venn diagram. As with a Boolean search, each time you add another “AND” to your search strategy, you narrow your results. So, let’s say keyword phrase #1 is YOUR JOB SKILLS, #2 is GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION and #3 is TYPE OF JOB YOU WANT. Once you put those three together, you could end up with a very tiny job market to target! In order to get your first job, you may need to broaden your search. Gain some new adaptable skills, extend your search to places you haven’t considered before, or consider jobs in the tech and information industry that are not traditional “library” jobs. Those jobs might turn out to be a perfect match for your energy and enthusiasm! Don’t just search the library job lists like SLA, ALA, PNLA, LibGig, and LISjobs, try to find out what companies and other organizations are hiring information professionals. Some examples I gave my Seattle-based audience included Serials Solutions, Zaaz, Ascentium, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Adaptability: once you have identified an organization you want to work in, learn as much as you can about them and their culture. For best results, adapt each and every resume or CV and cover-letter to match the job and the work environment of that organization. Look at their web pages and familiarize yourself with the culture you see represented there. Use the language of their website, and especially the language of the job description to describe your skills and experiences in your application materials. If you don’t understand the lingo or are unfamiliar with their corporate culture, try to set up an informational interview with someone in the organization who would be willing to tell you more about the work they do and what they look for in a new employee. Finally, if you are invited to interview for a position, be prepared to answer questions about why you are interested in working for that organization, and why you care about the work you will be doing in the position you hope to fill. Be the person they want!

I hope this information is helpful for those of you graduating this year. It is a tough marketplace right now, and I think you will need to be more flexible in your job searches than ever before. The information profession is changing every day, and while it becomes more interesting, it also becomes more competitive and complex at the same time. Please take advantage of this SLA community to post more ideas for a future ready job search in the comments below!

Chelle Batchelor is the Access Services Librarian at the University of Washington Bothell and Cascadia Community College Campus Library. She graduated from the University of Washington MLIS program in June 2005 and was hired as the Head of Interlibrary Loan at the University of Las Vegas in July 2005. Two years later (almost to the day!) she began her job at UWB. She was an SLA student member from 2003-2005 and is now actively involved in ALA, co-chairing the Access Services Discussion Group and the Cooperative Remote Circulation Committee. Chelle brings the perspective of a UW iSchool Grad whose cohort has gone far and wide in the Information profession in the past six years.

by Sue Wolper, President and CEO, Wolper Subscription Services

One of the challenging trends I see in the information marketplace today is that of relying on vendors to define your needs and to unilaterally develop the solutions that meet their interpretation of your needs.  As a participant in the information industry, I offer these recommendations to information professionals to ensure that you, your users and your organization are Future Ready:

Listen To Your Organization and Your Users When Defining Needs

Vendors and purchasers alike say that they are listening to user needs, but are we really listening?  Not only should we listen with our ears but also observe with our eyes what behaviors users demonstrate when seeking or applying information.  Be inquisitive and ask probing questions – why and how are more important than who, what and where.  Ask users how they would prefer to seek and apply information in a perfect world unbounded by today’s realities.  Then step back from the immediate interaction and ask yourself and others what information seeking and using behaviors will align best with the goals of your organization or community.  Is it really in the best interests of your organization to make finding information so simple that the user no longer has to think?  Shouldn’t users be questioning whether this is the best information, the right information, and accurate information to solve their problem?  What are the long-term implications for fostering user behavior that is satisfied with information that is the easiest to find?  Ask yourself whether user expectations are in alignment with the goals of the organization.  Temper the solution you choose to meet user needs with your own professional knowledge, expertise and experience.  Then seek a vendor that meets those needs, and is willing to modify their product offerings to truly meet the needs of your users and your organization.

Resist the Urge to be First

New technology is exciting, intriguing and addictive!  Instantaneous obsolescence is now built-in to every innovative advance.  Buy any new electronic device today and it is out-dated by the time you get it home and unpack it.  So resist that urge to be the first one to have the latest version just because it is new.  Don’t get overwhelmed by all the choices and options in the marketplace.  Evaluate the solutions in the context of what your users and organization really need.  There are noteworthy developments that do define future products, however, the time will come when that product is relevant to your needs.  On the other hand, don’t become complacent and satisfied with “good enough”.  But relax and don’t get caught up in the frenzy of “new and improved” cycles in product development.

Collaborate with Vendors in an Open-Minded Manner

Once you know what your true needs are, seek out vendors who are willing to listen to you.  Find vendors whose product development approach incorporates customer perspectives and involvement.  Discover the vendors who are agile, resilient, and responsive as well as have the vision and skills to deliver what their customers require.  Sometimes it is the smaller vendors who have these qualities because they need to in order to survive in the competitive marketplace.  Innovation often comes from the smaller vendors who recognize an unmet customer need and develop their offerings to satisfy that requirement.

Cooperate with Like-Minded Institutions

Too often it is the Big Players that define the market, whether they are the buyers or the sellers.  Seek out and join with other institutions that have similar needs, regardless of their size or purchasing power.  Speak up about your concerns regarding product functionality, desired features and unsatisfied needs.

Engage in more dialogue with your colleagues and with vendors to find collaborative solutions, after you have listened to your users.  Help vendors to meet your needs – now and in the future.

*”Seek first to understand, then to be understood” from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Sue Wolper is President and CEO of Wolper Subscription Services, a one-stop information management resource whose High Tech, High Touch® approach delivers the perfect combination of next-generation technology and time-proven, personalized service.  Learn more at www.wolper.com.

by Valerie Enriquez

Ask a humanities major to envision the concept of research and they would probably imagine long hours in a library or archive, perusing books and documents. However, ask a scientist to visualize research, and they will likely picture collecting data out in the field.

Open Science was born from Newton’s idea that scientific advancement relies on “standing on the shoulders of giants.” The sharing of ideas encourages the advanced development of knowledge. However, in the world of publish or perish, the shadow cast upon the shoulder is doubt: fear that in sharing preliminary data, a researcher may be scooped, to borrow a journalism term. As a budding archivist, I find the idea of preserving knowledge for future use appealing and the fear of being scooped short-sighted when considering the long game. What if raw data from someone’s research could be the missing piece to finding the cure for cancer, or at the very least, figure out why all the bees have gone and what we need to do to bring them back? What if important datasets faded to obscurity without anybody ever knowing about them?

What can we, as librarians, do to help encourage more sharing of research data? Article citation rate helps researchers by providing them with a way to measure their impact upon the literature within their field. DataCite is an initiative to help bring this level of prestige to data publication. So, why not help encourage data sharing and citation through outreach and advocacy? For example, providing handouts or workshops about data research and the proper citation of reused data (as per Altman 2007):

• Dataset Author
• Dataset Title
• Date the dataset was published/made public
• Unique Global Identifier (such as a DOI or Handle)
• Universal Numeric Fingerprint
• Bridge Service (such as the DOI resolver)

There are many tools available to help researchers share data. For example, OpenWetware offers researchers a wiki format lab notebook, where they can share their observations with each other and solicit feedback. Digital repositories such as ORNL DAAC (Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Archive) for biogeochemical dynamics, ecological data, and environmental processes; TreeBASE for phylogenetic information, GenBank for genetic sequences, and PANGAEA for geoscientific and environmental data help ensure that the data created through the hard work of researchers is preserved for future researchers to build upon.

Last summer, I participated in an internship with DataONE, where I attempted to find examples of articles citing data that had been created in prior studies. The experience was  like trying to find a friend on Facebook if all I knew about them was their hair color and favorite breakfast cereal. At first, I felt like a failure, since as an information scientist, what else could it possibly have been if I could not find the information I was seeking? However, this turned out to be an opportunity to prove the necessity of enforcing data citation standards and creating tools that track data reuse in the same way that we track article citation and journal impact factors.

What can we do? Ongoing evaluation is needed to determine the impact of data reuse and the need for citation standards. I am currently taking courses in evaluation and digital preservation and curation to learn more about past efforts and see how they have been refined over time. My internship mentor from DataOne is going to coordinate a related project that she refers to as the “Tracking 1000 Datasets Project.” Along with staying on top of trends in data research, we must also drive the creation of standards and tools to best serve our user populations. It is time to stop thinking of research and raw data as merely a step towards getting the end product of publishing. If it is truly a “publish or perish” world, we need to advance the idea of publishing, and helping faculty and students  find a place to deposit their initial data could be as much of an outreach and instruction opportunity as helping them find related articles or datasets.

It is little wonder that data librarianship is one of the fastest growing fields in library science. It is up to us to grab such opportunities and stay up to date about the resources available to our users, or risk falling off the shoulders of giants.

Thus, we should lead by example through:

• evaluation of the existing literature and of our own practices
• collaboration with our users, other institutions, and our vendors
• and instruction of our users, new librarians and with our own continuing education.

As I like to think of it, we are all in the process of building: building upon our individual base of knowledge, the knowledge of those in the library science field, and the knowledge of those who require our services. If we do not build upon past information and lessons learned from prior mistakes, our structure will fall with no foundation. If we do not build in conjunction with our present users and creators of tools, we risk having our great tower of learning fall to pieces, walling us in isolation and hindering communication. The past, present, and future of our profession are as inextricably connected as our relationships with researchers ought to be.

Valerie Enriquez is a Fellow with the Association of Research Libraries Career Enhancement Program pursuing an MLIS from Simmons College with a concentration in archives management.  Her internships have included the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the Harvard Countway Center for the History of Medicine, and the DataONE Project.  Her career goal is to use the past to contextualize the present and shape the future of how we seek and process information.

by Michael Haynes

As a consultant who works with organisations to improve their performance, I can definitely say that I am in total agreement with the four key components required for future readiness.

Collaboration: It is imperative now that all elements within the value chain (companies, customers, suppliers) work together to deliver the products and services that are being sought after. The ability to effectively develop and deliver sought after offerings is often best achieved through such efforts. As a result, many organisations are starting to do this with their product development. Boeing is an example that quickly comes to mind. Given the added complexity, cost and risk of developing and delivering products and services…this will really need to continue to be the way forward.

Adaptable Skills: Also another imperative that must be met. The way business is being conducted is constantly changing. Hence a much broader and deeper skill set is required in many areas of business. Marketing and Sales are two examples. Both now require a data driven analytical and strategic skill set. The distinctions between various functional areas of business are becoming more and more blurred. Again referring to marketing for instance, today and future marketers need to have solid foundations in marketing, strategy, finance and even IT and statistics. With the heavy emphasis on technology and information (and the increasing sophistication of both) moving forward, continued adaptability and expansion of skills will be critical for both one’s survival and success.

Alignment: Establishing alignment both within organisations as well as among other members of the value/supply chain is critical. Gaining internal alignment is often quite a daunting and challenging task for many large corporations. Senior leaders in the organisation must spearhead and drive this. Unfortunately all too often there is difficulty in gaining alignment to meet common objectives. I suspect this is due to the various internal agendas which exist.

Community: Again given the added complexity that now exists given technology, establishing a community among those with common goals and interests is going to be key to success. They will be able to pull their skills and resources together (ie collaborate) to achieve the desired objectives.  I think a “win win” attitude must be adopted more within the business setting to allow more progress and achievement to occur moving forward.

Michael Haynes is Director of 2Excell Consulting, an international firm that positions B2B organisations to maximise their bottom line performance by empowering them to systematically understand and respond to customer needs. He has over 14 years experience in the areas of customer insights, strategy development and execution working for large corporations in various industries including automotive, financial services and telecommunications in Australia, Brazil and Canada. Michael can be reached at michael@2excell.com

Ann Koopman, Philadelphia Chapter, Multiple Divisions

It’s over thirty years since I entered library school, armed with a fresh BA in the liberal arts, and hoping to go into rare books and archives.  We students thought we were hot stuff, running to the computer center with our shoeboxes full of punch cards that contained PL1 code, or learning to search online services using a phone-cradle modem – skills every “modern” librarian would need!

But we weren’t so much learning specific skills as how to think about professional issues, and how to open our minds to receive and act on new ideas.   For me, that’s the core of being future ready, in any decade and any place.

What are some of the characteristics that allow a person to be flexible, to flow with change and even thrive on it?   What should we all be cultivating in order to shape our own futures?

• Curiosity & willingness to experiment with new ideas and technologies.
  SLA is an especially good source for exposure to new trends and for opportunities to learn new skills.
• Sharing, teamwork, and collaboration.
  Social animals thrive on community and inclusion; we all need the support of our colleagues, both as mentors and mentees.   We also need to integrate ourselves powerfully with our clients, demonstrating our value to the team.   It’s through engagement that we earn validation.
• Solid foundations and respect for the past.
  Knowing who we are and what we believe in provides the confidence needed to build new models.
• Proactivity.
  I love the “pick yourself” post (Dale Stanley, http://futureready365.sla.org/04/06/pick-yourself/).  When we take responsibility for our own continuous learning and for acquiring the new skills needed to cope with a changing professional environment, we position ourselves to embrace and even make new opportunities.  Step up to volunteer yourself for assignments or association tasks that expand your horizons.
• A sense of humor and pleasure in accomplishment.
  If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?  Joseph Campbell’s “follow your bliss” has proven to be a pretty good mantra over the years.

Of course, participation in SLA is one key to professional growth, from CE courses to networking, to leadership development.  It’s where you can find your voice to shape the conversation about issues that are important to you.

Over the years I’ve owned a paper conservation business, worked as a science & engineering librarian, become a medical librarian, morphed into a web content editor, and who knows what the future holds?  It will surely be fascinating.

Ann Koopman is the JEFFLINE Editor for the Academic & Instructional Support & Resources (AISR)  at Thomas Jefferson University.   She is a candidate for Division Cabinet Chair-Elect for the 2012 SLA Board of Directors.

by Libby Trudell, San Francisco Bay & Silicon Valley Chapters, IT & LM Divisions

At ProQuest and Dialog, we’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to help our customers become future ready. For the last 2 years, we’ve been working to develop a new platform to enable customers meet their strategic goals.  The intuitive, powerful search capabilities were designed through thousands of user contacts to enhance the skills sets  of users ranging from students to professionals.  It has a whole suite of tools to help info pros and end users share their work collaboratively.  It’s what customers have told us they are looking for to meet information needs into  the future.

But another aspect part of future readiness is the ability to work through change.  Moving from a comfortable and known service to something new is a big adjustment for both librarians and users.   Migrating to the new platform will require that all customers  adapt to change, whether they currently use Dialog, DataStar, CSA Illumina, ProQuest Dissertations, or a ProQuest full text content collection.   We invite SLA colleagues to get a feel for what’s  on the horizon for the new ProQuest Dialog™ service and the new ProQuest platform.   We’re getting ready to embark on an exciting journey.

– Libby Trudell, on behalf of the whole ProQuest and Dialog platform development team. Read more and get reacquainted with us at http://www.dialog.com/about/.

by Catherine Lavallée-Welch, Florida & Caribbean Chapter, Academic, IT and Sci-Tech Divisions

Could you describe the design of an academic library constructed in 2016? It’s easy to imagine following current trends: emphasis on the learning process and the creation of a learning community, more collaborative work, the increasing amount of electronic resources, the use of technology, increased interdisciplinarity, accountability and sustainability.

What about designing the building for 2031? Or 2061? Today’s librarian in charge of designing a new building must cope with a library evolving at a rate faster than any time since Gutenberg.

Faced with such an opportunity, I recently attended a conference on library space planning and revitalization. My main takeaway was to put the emphasis on the infrastructure, and not on fixtures or furniture. Key components are flexible, multi-use space, lots of natural light, extensive electrical wiring and the presence of quiet study zones. The types of services offered and the roles and functions of librarians and staff are evolving.

The new library is a place that is used simultaneously physically and virtually; a place that permits users to participate and collaborate in a learning, scholarly community.

Should we mention the “p” word? Yes, there will be “print” collections. Some new libraries opt for a digital-only collection through extensive storage and digitizing. Other lean toward the digital-heavy approach – see Helen Josephine’s excellent post on this blog on the new Engineering Library at Stanford University. I believe that libraries will utilize select print monographs until publishers use business models for e-books that meet all libraries’ and users’ needs. Don’t hide your print books; use the stacks as architectural elements to create zones. Libraries still have a huge symbolic value and book stacks are the clearest representation of such.

Conference attendees had the opportunity to visit the recently renovated Thompson Library at the Ohio State University. With large glass walls, the book tower is a prime visual focus. However, the building stays user-centered with a variety of seating areas for individual, communal and collaborative work.

I spoke to students about their library habits. A finance junior admitted to not checking out books and rarely using the electronic resources.  Still, he chooses the library to study over myriad options spread over the campus. He found when students go to the library, it’s to hunker down, get to work and study seriously. It’s the building – and the atmosphere within – that attracts him.

User studies offer one of the best ways to develop the library design. Users are usually thrilled to be a part of the process and the studies provide insights into unarticulated needs. Don’t limit recruitment to library staff, student workers or your regular users. Most important are the people who are not currently using your library.

What is keeping them away? What tools, spaces or services are you missing? What will convince them to utilize the facility? Don’t neglect to poll the school’s administration. What are the organizational strategic goals?

Gather input beyond surveys and focus groups. You can use design charrettes; usage observation; user diaries; photo surveys; usage mapping; interviews outside the library; late-night residence hall visits; reply cards left around the facility, etc.

Campus space is at a premium and financial resources are scarce. This situation may continue for a long time. Rest assured though that success in the short and long term will go to the flexible academic library closely aligned with user and organization culture and goals.

Catherine Lavallée-Welch is the Director of the University of South Florida Polytechnic Library. One of her current projects is planning and design of a library and learning commons  for her institution’s new campus. Catherine is a board member of the Florida and Caribbean Chapter and of the Academic Division. She’s a candidate for Division Cabinet Chair-Elect for the 2012 SLA Board of Directors.