by Dianna Roberts, Australia and New Zealand Chapter, Transportation Division

Our Information Centre has always been well-positioned in the company especially as our two most recent Chief Executives had wives who were librarians. We now have a new, young and dynamic CE with a non-librarian wife and who is making lots of changes, all of which I support, but like many of you I suffer from what I refer to as ‘librarians’ paranoia,” i.e. the fear of being seen as irrelevant and potentially disposable.

My immediate manager has been asking questions which were making me feel nervous, such as “what would it cost the company NOT to have the Information Centre?”, but I knew I’d done all I could to present a positive image with glowing feedback and value statements that proved our worth, and that any outcome was probably now beyond my control. So this morning I was very pleasantly surprised (almost shocked!) to be told that the company wants us to move beyond being viewed as “the library” and to take on a more active role of Information Management with ownership of functions such as EDRMS, e-learning, KM and anything else I can suggest.

We currently have a staff of only 2.5 FTE who serving a population of 2,500 in four different countries. Our main focus has been on indepth research, document supply and alerting services so taking on these wider roles will mean expanding our staff and learning new skills. It will also provide us with more authoritative position in the company.

What an exciting year it is going to be.

Dianna Roberts is the Manager of the Information Centre at Opus International Consultants Ltd.

by Janice LaChance, Chief Executive Officer of SLA

“If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.” – Eric Shinseki, U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs and former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army

This is one of my favorite quotes from someone I greatly admire. To me, it sums up the situation we all find ourselves in today. Even when Eric Shinseki was born in 1942, everyone was feeling the pressure to change on one level or another. Politicians, soldiers, salespeople, advertisers, accountants, and yes, even SLA members, were encountering new technologies to use, policies to follow, expectations to fulfill, and lessons to pass on to the next generation of pioneers.

It seems one of the few things that hasn’t changed over the years is the constancy of change itself. So, why is there so much emphasis on change now if it’s old news?

Because we’ve seldom encountered change of this pace or magnitude before. Everything—from your workplace to your organization’s strategy to the phone you use to the car you drive to the road you drive it on—will be different in five years. The occurrence and pace of change are out of our control. The way in which we choose to change is not. We must not simply change, but progress.

Sure, as information and knowledge professionals, SLA members are hearing about the importance of being future-ready perhaps more than others, but all professions are being called upon to learn new skills and adapt to a new world of work. If you’re an SLA member, you’re not in it alone.

We have a vast yet tight-knit community that acts as a support structure to all our members—and this blog is just one of the many things that bring us together. SLA has conducted alignment research that is unprecedented within the profession, and that research has shown us the way to introducing new professional development programs and educational resources. SLA is faced with the task of providing relevant resources to librarians in medical hospitals in India and information analysts in top law firms in the United States, and everyone in between. While the context of knowledge delivery and use is unique across the globe, the necessity to adapt is not.

I’ll leave you with some of SLA’s resources included with your membership, many resulting from the alignment research and all focused on the task of giving a diverse membership tools to better meet the demands of information users across the globe.

• SLA’s 23 Things – Deb Hunt, along with MLIS grad student Kim McGrath, worked together to update this weekly learning program. I think you’ll like what’s new here; see week 6 for updated social networking and learning. This program was created by our members, for our members.
• Atomic Learning – This resource often gets passed over, but it shouldn’t. From beginner to expert level, from Sharepoint to Delicious, these easy videos are a fun and easy way to learn at your own pace.
• Alignment Toolkit –Look for tools, based on the alignment research, to be unveiled starting April 1^st and leading up to SLA 2011. Writing Your Own Marketing Plan, Dictionary of Future Ready Terms, and SLA Tools for LIS Students will be among the first resources provided.
• This blog – Our strongest asset is…ourselves! No, sometimes we don’t all have time to read the blog every day, but the good thing is we can catch up at any point in time. We’re up to about 60 posts already (way to go, Cindy and team!). So read, discuss, and try a post of your own sometime in 2011.
• Click U – Ask the Copyright Experts, Social Media Research for Business, Moving into Management.  From in-person classes to online webinars, free and paid, these opportunities are scattered throughout the year.
• Information Outlook – Read our latest issue online. Don’t miss the articles on mobile applications; one could give you an idea to change your organization for the better.

So don’t look at Future Ready as a goal for just 2011, because it’s more than that. Treat it as something to embrace, a way of thinking. It’s not only about seeking out opportunities, but looking forward to those opportunities with the confidence of preparation and positivity. The world is driving forward, upward, and outward, and I’ve seen more than enough evidence from SLA’s outstanding membership to know that we can be right there in the driver’s seat.

Janice Lachance, SLA’s Chief Executive Officer since 2003, is a popular speaker and commentator and the champion, spokesperson and global ambassador for SLA and its 11,000 members working in 75 countries on five continents.  Before joining SLA, she was a management consultant to nonprofit and membership organizations in the areas of strategic planning, organization transformation, and culture change.

by Rachel Wangerin, SLA Minnesota President

Had someone told me in library school that I would one day go on to become the president of the SLA MN chapter, I would have thought they were crazy. But here I am, 6 years after graduation, doing just that. The main advice I heard, whether just out of undergraduate school, or after receiving my Master’s degree, was network, network, network. So much so that it almost felt like a dirty word. One secret that they don’t tell you is that once you start participating in a professional organization (and I mean participating, not just joining) the networking starts to come naturally. Another secret that isn’t apparent is that participating in a professional organization can add to your professional development every bit as much as work inside your own organization.

I had the opportunity to begin my information career working with individuals with a huge amount of experience and knowledge. I learned so much those first couple of years. My boss was very supportive and constantly looking for opportunities for me to grow. During that time, I sat back and let her help direct my professional development. She is the one who recommend my name when the SLA Chemistry Division was looking for a program planner for the 2008 Annual Conference.

As that boss moved towards retirement, I began to realize that there would be no one left to drive my professional development. In school, we are used to teachers and professors telling us what we need to do to succeed. However, in the workplace, that isn’t always the case. We need to figure it out for ourselves and take the steps that will help us have new experiences and grow. So, I started to seek out ways to drive my own success.

The SLA MN chapter drafted me as I finished my stint as a program planner to step into the four year commitment that included President of the chapter. As I begin the third year of that commitment, I look back at how much I have learned and am amazed. My confidence is much higher and I have had the opportunity to make connections all over MN and the rest of the world.

While SLA has been a huge part of my professional development, I also do many other things. I monitor numerous blogs and websites for new ideas. I try to attend online and live seminars when they are applicable and available.

While I was very lucky to have someone to direct my early career development, this is not the case for everyone. We are the only ones responsible for our professional development. We have to own it and continue owning it throughout our career. This will help us to be “Future Ready.”

Rachel Wangerin is a corporate, technical information specialist working for a global research and development company.

by Debbie Schachter, Western Canada Chapter, Information Technology Division

It is a pleasure to be able to contribute to the Future Ready blog for 2011, particularly as I’ve recently been thinking about the past and the future of special libraries and our association, as part of a panel for SLA Western Canada Chapter’s 25^th Anniversary. The conclusions that were drawn by that panel and by the audience were mostly positive about the future, and not unexpected. Beyond the specific technology predictions offered, people generally talked about:

• the need to continue learning new skills;
• the need to develop community engagement processes with our users;
• the need to continue to network and support each other. 

I think one of the most important things that we can do to get ready for the future is to build a good personal foundation today; and we do that by developing our change management skills in both personal and professional contexts. It is said that you make your own “luck” through your plans and actions, rather than simply responding to the events that happen to you. If you are prepared, either through continuing education, new skills development, or even just psychologically prepared for the unexpected, you will be better prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. 

Scenario planning is a great way to do some of the mental exercises required for thinking of the future. Once you have started to look at some alternative realities, it is a heck of a lot easier to begin planning for these than if you are simply reacting to what is happening, as it happens. It is difficult to predict the future but we can plan scenarios based on what has happened before, and what we are seeing today. When I think about the work that I will be doing next year, I expect that much of it will be the same type of work, but there will be the challenges of unexpected changes, and obstacles that will need to be addressed, and skills that I will need to learn. 

I also want to say that the power of a movement, such as the Future Ready movement, can accomplish a lot for all of us. I don’t know what I will be doing in five or ten (or two!) years, but I do know that there are lots of smart librarians out there who are also thinking and planning and sharing. One of the areas in which we do excel is in our networking and sharing. The very nature of the Future Ready movement is about bringing the profession into the future together.

Debbie Schachter has held multiple leadership positions in SLA’s Western Canada Chapter.