by Karen Huffman, SLA Fellow for 2011, Past Chair, SLA Knowledge Management
Manager, Technology Solutions, National Geographic Society

During the SLA Annual Conference in Philadelphia, I attended a Knowledge Management session on “Building an Innovative Environment.” People from leading organizations shared what innovation meant to them:

• PricewaterhouseCoopers: Innovation = something new or different. It’s about ideas. Definition does not say anything about the value of the ideas. How do you create a culture where all ideas are valued? ~ Sheldon Laube
• Cargill: There’s a kernel of genius in everyone, and the goal of all of us is to bring that out. ~ Gregory Page, Cargill’s CEO
• NIH: It’s about connecting very divergent dots and putting diverse ways of thinking in new, innovative ways. “Creativity is connecting the ideas.” ~ Steve Jobs

Many “dots” are key, but how do we evolve our model for sharing ideas and engaging in conversations to foster a continuous process of improvement? I’ve had a handful of follow-up conversations with SLA members and brainstormed a possible initiative to create a framework for proposing and voting on ideas for consideration by SLA and its members. From those discussions, I would like to propose the following format for pitching ideas:

Idea title (start by suggesting something achievable within a timely fashion).
Brief description.
Keywords
(include two to three keywords to categorize your idea).
Value to SLA member.
Strategic fit (see SLA’s Vision, Mission, and Core Value statement www.sla.org/content/SLA/AssnProfile/slanplan/index.cfm).

So, if you are willing to participate in a pilot project, pitch your ideas to me: ideas(at)cybersailors.org. I’ll plan to aggregate and develop a mechanism for discussing and voting on ideas proposed.

Summary, recordings, and editing by Karen Huffman, Past Chair, SLA KM Division

Listen to what leading SLA KM members have to say in these short video recordings on the following KM topics:

KM Role Models: Introductions and Overviews of Roles (6:18 minutes)

Interviews: Patrick Lambe, Denise Chochrek, Dianna Wiggins, Ulla de Stricker, Richard Huffine, Nerida Hart, and Stephanie Jordan.

Description: Selection of ideas shared by knowledge management professionals about who they are and what they do (and love!).

KM Success Stories and Challenges (8:48 minutes)

Interviews: Ulla de Stricker, Mary Talley, Richard Huffine, Nerida Hart, Denise Chochrek, Patrick Lambe, and Dianna Wiggins.

Description: Seven leaders in KM from around the globe tell their success stories and challenges.

KM: Skills, Compentencies, and Experiences (6:14 minutes)

Interviews: Patrick Lambe, Denise Chochrek, Ulla de Stricker, Mary Talley, Richard Huffine, Nerida Hart, and Dianna Wiggins.

Description: What skills, competencies and experience do you think are important for your role as a knowledge professional? Learn what leaders in the field have to say.

URL: http://youtu.be/TlxcVR0c6Sk

Cynthia Reifsnider, North Carolina Chapter, Business & Finance, Competitive Intelligence, and Knowledge Management Divisions

“Future Ready,” when I started work at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, meant revisiting the Business Intelligence (environmental scanning) program that my predecessors had built. The old system offered a web interface for typing records into an SQL database; it had no safeguards for copyright compliance and was time-consuming to enter information. Since no new records had been added for more than a year, there was no great pressure to resume use of the system. Environmental scanning and Business Intelligence are parts of the information profession that I’m passionate about, so finding a new and better solution was important to me.

With the help of a student intern from UNC’s School of Information and Library Science, I embarked on an information audit of our Institute’s faculty and staff. What were their research subject interests? How did they prefer to share information (electronically or in paper) and what were their communication tools (e-mail or file share)? What did Business Intelligence mean to them? Did they find value in the Business Intelligence system?

Our information audit returned a range of wants and needs but contained some core values. Our faculty and staff needed timely news and literature on subjects they were researching for grants and contracts they held, grant proposals they wanted to write, journal papers and conference presentations they were working on – and they wanted to catch more of what they felt they were missing, whatever that might be. Yes, they found value in the Business Intelligence system, but they would rather have updates pushed to them, preferably via e-mail.

From the perspective of my Office of Research Services, the emphasis needed to be on speed, agility, low investment of budget dollars and copyright. Some of the faculty wanted to be able to share findings with non-university colleagues, which complicated the copyright issue. Off-the-shelf digital library products proved too expensive to consider and required too much up-front customization. So what Knowledge Management solution was right for us?

The solution we settled on combines RefWorks as a citation manager; library databases, electronic news subscriptions and Google alerts for content; and Microsoft Outlook e-mail templates as a delivery mechanism.

We are fortunate to be homed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and our University Libraries offer RefWorks citation management software to campus users.

Our RefWorks implementation is connected directly to most of the Libraries’ e-resource tools including ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, and IEEE Xplore; selected articles from these databases can be imported directly into RefWorks with a few mouse clicks to populate citations, abstracts and URLs. This connection enables quick and easy import of relevant items from most of the Libraries’ resources, either through one-time searching or use of TOC alerts.

The RefGrab-It plug-in in RefWorks enables us to import citations and URLs from non-PDF web pages with minimal editing required. The RefGrab-It feature makes it efficient for us time-wise to use Google Alerts for relevant news articles.

Further, my Office partners with the University Libraries’ to extend our RefWorks subscription to include the RefAware add-on, which enables our creating custom monitoring of specific journals and terms with e-mail alerts. The import feature from RefAware into RefWorks has a few bugs, but we have developed some short-cut workarounds to get past them.

RefWorks also gives us an easy way to build a digital library, create bibliographies, and search for results by keyword, folder, author, periodical, date retrieved, etc. By grouping our entries into folders by the Centers within the Institute, we made it easy to pull out the week’s new entries into a bibliography for individual Centers. Then we copy and paste the bibliography into our MS Outlook e-mail template (example below) with branding for our office (free marketing!). Our template also includes a link to the public RefShare access site to our RefWorks database, in case our users want to initiate their own searches of the archives. We have found, however, that our users prefer the weekly updates for accessing references directly rather than using the archives. Our office, renamed the Office of Research Services & Knowledge Management last year, frequently uses the archives to create new bibliographic reports and complete ad-hoc research reports in response to specific user queries.

The previous Business Intelligence system covered only 6 centers within the Institute. Our office currently covers 14 Centers and Offices within the Institute, plus 3 special projects. Some of our weekly e-newsletter distribution lists include external (non-University) recipients, who then give feedback to our faculty about how well-informed and current the Institute is about our research areas. My supervisor routinely sends Institute staff and partners our way to take advantage of this product and service. Feedback on our Business Intelligence system is overwhelmingly positive and includes comments such as how timely a reference is for a project or meeting or about the direct relevance the e-newsletter is to current work. Since implementing this solution in early 2009, we have entered close to 6,000 references into the system.

While the system is not completely without bugs, it does provide us with an efficient way to identify, capture, and distribute knowledge among our user community. It also provides us with a weekly branded communication to our users and clear value-add ROI to show our stakeholders, with little impact on our budget.

Ms. Reifsnider is Director of Research Services and Knowledge Management for the Kenan Institute and is the primary research and analysis source for the Director and the Institute’s Centers and departments. She is a subject-matter specialist across many fields of business and technology, including air commerce, logistics and supply chain, demographics, competitive intelligence, entrepreneurship, renewable energy, and market research. She also directs strategic planning for knowledge management and leads the business intelligence program for the Institute.

For the Center for Air Commerce, Ms. Reifsnider conducts research and analysis in support of the faculty’s projects, papers and presentations; oversees data management and database development; designs and implements knowledge management tools focused on the Aerotropolis concept.

Prior to her work at the Institute, Ms. Reifsnider was a Research Analyst in Hewlett-Packard’s Imaging and Printing Group for nearly five years. She holds an MSIS from the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill and a BS in Atmospheric Science from UNC-Asheville.

Contact her at Cynthia_Reifsnider@unc.edu , visit http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/KI/ or on Twitter @kenaninstitute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Darron Chapman, Europe Chapter, Academic, Business & Finance Divisions

Earlier this year, TFPL used its extensive networks to take a snapshot of how organisations are assigning Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) responsibilities and to see what trends are emerging. Key to the survey was the concept of ‘responsibilities’ rather than job titles and the KIM Responsibilities Framework. The Framework was developed following TFPL research in2006 and provided a structure for the survey. Respondents came from global, national and local organisations and were predominately UK based. The full report based on the survey is available on the TFPL website http://www.tfpl.com/resources/reports.cfm but the following key points standout.

Organisational strategy for innovation and investment has become a significant driver for assigning KIM responsibilities, suggesting that KIM is regarded more as an essential, rather than discretionary, business function.  This is a discernible shift towards KIM roles reporting into the business, as KIM needs are identified on an enterprise-wide basis. A model has evolved towards the dispersal of KIM practitioners throughout organisations supported by a central team. A matrix approach also means that dispersed practitioners are also part of a KIM team. So, in spite of rumours to the contrary, KIM teams still have a place in what’s often called the “future ready” business.

KIM headcount is remarkably stable, having not significantly fallen over the last five years. There is evidence of patterns of growth and decline in public and private organisations; however there is a net gain overall, with a wider range of sectors employing KIM staff.

There is a modest growth predicted in roles across the Framework with some areas more dynamic than others. The apparent loss of some traditional roles and responsibilities has been mitigated by creation of other, enriched roles calling for a continuing development of new skills and novel application of traditional skills.
There is a clear move towards the core KIM disciplines – information management, records management, library and information services, business analysis, and knowledge management,– coming together or merging. However, some relevant functions — such as Research, Competitive Intelligence and Information Technology – do not generally align themselves with KIM community.

The personal impact of individuals, team members as well as KIM Leaders is increasingly important. It is crucial to be able to align with, and understand, the organisation, to have the ability to develop skills, and to recognise how the role contributes to corporate success.

Questions raised

Inevitably the survey raised a number of questions in our minds, and we are sure that there are many more. So, for example:

• Should KIM professionals focus on aligning themselves to corporate strategy, innovation and investment?
• Will the KIM profession develop into a multi-disciplinary but cohesive group, or will it become a federation of different disciplines?
• If KIM roles are increasingly dispersed within organisations, will individuals continue to identify with the KIM community as a support network? Or, as new people are recruited into these roles, will they identify with their business community first?
• How far are we experiencing a step change or continuing to evolve as a profession?
• Have some functions, such as Research, began to split off from KIM as a career path?

We would welcome feedback and any further questions you might have at info@tfpl.com.

Darron Chapman is the Managing Director TFPL Ltd and President Elect of SLA’s Europe Chapter. Darron has been with TFPL since 1990, initially focusing on recruitment, becoming Managing Director after TFPL’s acquisition by IDOX Plc. Darron’s work as Director of Recruitment gave him a broad and unique view of developments in the information and business world. An established member of the executive team he helped shape the direction of the company and launched the first recruitment service dedicated to knowledge management.
Darron can be reached at darron.chapman@tfpl.com and followed on Twitter @DPCHA.

by Jamal Cromity, North Carolina Chapter, Information Technology and Leadership & Management Divisions

Being future ready will enable you to adapt to using tools that improve communication and help you develop new work flow paths. When using social media, the path to making successful community connection is not always certain. While you may have a desire to use one or two networking tools consistently, you will hear about another tool that sparks your interest which can also cause feelings associated with “information overload.” With so much information available from a number of directions, it becomes difficult to discern and synthesize people and services.

….Step back, take a deep breath, and be more determined to move forward. Follow these steps:

• Continue to you use the one or two services that work for you
• Through status updates or blog posts, schedule time to post either daily or weekly
• Read and reply to others you follow or are connected with

Your community connections will grow over time.

Here is a tip…

For personal or as an enterprise competitive intelligence site, those using tools such as Facebook and Twitter can consider converting these micro blogs into a newspaper format using Paper.li to help improve the way you discern, synthesize, and share information from the community connections you make.

In the image on the right is a paper I created called, “The Co-Lab Tribune” to help review post sent via links by those I follow.

Jamal Cromity has worked in the information industry for over 15 years. He is currently a UX Specialist for ProQuest Dialog and is Associate Editor for the New Review of Information Networking. Jamal holds an MLS from NCCU , an MBA from NYIT and is PM (Project Management) certified. He has received awards and honors from many associations including ALA, SLA, NCSLA, and NCLA.

by Quincie Rivers, Washington DC Chapter, Knowledge Management Division

InfoCurrent has had a ringside seat watching the library and information science world change over the last few decades. As the Information Management Division of CORESTAFF Services, InfoCurrent has a 40-year history of providing library services to a broad spectrum of business, industry and government clients.

While InfoCurrent continues to place traditional librarians, technicians and clerks, we are constantly being asked to find highly skilled professionals who can manage digital archives, content management systems, web content, digital rights management, taxonomy, e-learning, competitive intelligence and analysis and more.

To be “future ready” in today’s market means more than being proficient in traditional Library Sciences.  It means being futuristic, strategic, and quick to adapt to change. Employers are looking for librarians who are creative, flexible, innovative – who are at ease with technology and understand how that technology can help an organization manage their resources better. Information is key to a business’s growth. Hiring managers expect a librarian to be team oriented, collaborative, people focused. They want and need librarians who can become thought leaders, strategists and innovators.

As companies are exploring ways to recover and expand in the current economic climate, budgets continue to be under strict scrutiny.  Often with limited resources, library services must continue to evolve and become leaner, smarter and faster as the new age of technology and social media transforms our markets.

Organizations and businesses realize that the management of knowledge is a valuable commodity and necessary for growth.  It is not enough, however, just to manage information and provide a service but rather to proactively adopt new technologies and economies of scale.  Businesses who have sought skilled personnel to cost effectively deliver and streamline information now view these individuals in a far less traditional role.

How does one become future ready?  Become innovative and adapt to the evolution of business strategies as it relates to your specific industry.  While the demand for MLIS/MLS professionals remains high, the work environment will be a far less conventional business.  As long as you are flexible and have a curiosity for life-long learning, there will be a place in today’s future ready business world by translating traditional skills and adapting new technologies to their best and highest use.

The day of the back office librarian is vanishing. Professional Librarians are embedded in the teams they service. They are managing virtual researchers and collections, orchestrating the delivery of these valuable resources in whatever form they take. Expect to be part of a team collaboratively working to provide innovative solutions in a dynamic environment.

It’s an exciting time to be a librarian. At InfoCurrent we see the future every day.

InfoCurrent, with offices in Washington, DC, New York City, Boston and Houston, is the Information Management Division of CORESTAFF Services specializing in library and records management services.  InfoCurrent is a full-service, nationwide staffing firm offering temporary, temp-to-hire, direct hire and project management for almost every industry, on projects large and small, and on items from legal documents to art collections.  We keep pace with trends in both Library Sciences and Records Management, sharing best practices to help our clients build faster, nimbler – and smarter – organizations.

by Allan Foster, Europe Chapter and Business & Finance Division

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————–—————–

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

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

Reposted with permission from Slaw.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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