This week’s posts come from truly gifted professionals of the SLA North Carolina chapter. While each representative has made an effort to keep their topics inline with the central theme of SLA Future Ready 365 blog, you will notice that each post provides a unique perspective and is intended to help a variety of readers that visit the blog. For more information about our members and the North Carolina chapter, be sure to visit ncarolina.sla.org.

We recently hosted a class of library school students at our non-profit/corporate library. One student asked, “What is the most valuable thing you learned in library school? My answer to this question was simple: the reference interview.

It may seem strange to emphasize something as basic as the reference interview in a “future-ready” blog. However, in my interactions with clients – mostly start-up entrepreneurs in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device sectors – the reference interview is key to our mutual success.

To tell you the truth, I don’t actually remember what I was taught about the reference interview, other than a basic caution to make sure that you fully understand a client’s information needs before you start answering their question. It was taught in the general context of a university reference desk, not as a special librarian’s tool. At the time, something like this crossed my mind – “Well, duh…. of course I want to make sure the patron gets their question answered.” And I’m certain that if there were specific steps to the process, I considered those to be as inane as the pre-scripted dialog of a telemarketer.

But after 6 years of working with entrepreneurial clients, I have realized the true power of the reference interview when it is conducted in a manner appropriate to my setting. Fully understanding a client’s needs is especially crucial in a business environment where inaccurate or incomplete answers are a waste of time and money. Our clients come to us with varied expectations, and especially after seeing our very small print collection, some are skeptical about what we can do for them. These skeptical ones will ask a brief question and expect you to say, “no, I can’t answer that,” then move on. They don’t know our library…yet!

It’s extremely useful to sit down with these clients to discuss their underlying information needs. As we chat, they start sharing about their projects and I can step in to offer possible solutions. When they bring up questions that may be impossible to answer directly with their minimal budgets and our limited resources (we are a non-profit, after all!), I can advise them about alternative data and sources that they may not have considered. As opposed to most reference desk interactions, I usually have a longer-term conversation with my clients by phone or email, and I can continue to help reframe their questions and refine their needs. Whether they pay us to do research for them, or they carry on with the research themselves, the outcome has been improved by our discussion of the problem. I also learn a lot from my clients about how their world works, and what strategies they use to build their business. Educating myself through our discussions helps me to be more effective in dealing with all of my clients, because I understand their perspectives that much better.

Delivery preferences can also be determined in a reference interview. Some of my clients are scientists-turned-entrepreneurs, and they want to see every detail that I can dig up. Others are business folk and just want to see the bottom line, executive-summary style. Learning from my clients not only what they need, but how they want it delivered, means that they will be more satisfied with the results. That makes them more likely to come back for additional research and refer us to their colleagues. It also makes their business more successful, giving them a higher chance of obtaining funding and growing jobs in North Carolina, which is our main goal at the Biotechnology Center.

In his keynote presentation at the last SLA conference, Thomas Friedman told us that in the new economy jobs that can be outsourced, will be. Therefore, a big part of being “future-ready” means that librarians need to find our strengths and ways to distinguish ourselves not only from offshore workforces, but also from online tools like search engines. I find the reference interview to be an invaluable tool in training my clients not to treat me like another search engine – but to respect me, their librarian, as a valued partner in their work. Maybe that leads to repeat business for our library, maybe it keeps me crucial to my organization…. and just maybe it begins to change their perceptions about what a librarian is and does.

Karin Shank is a Research Librarian at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center in Research Triangle Park, and active in the North Carolina chapter of SLA. She holds an M.S. dual degree in Crop Science and Botany from NC State University as well as a Masters in Library Science from North Carolina Central University.

This week’s posts come from truly gifted professionals of the SLA North Carolina chapter. While each representative has made an effort to keep their topics inline with the central theme of SLA Future Ready 365 blog, you will notice that each post provides a unique perspective and is intended to help a variety of readers that visit the blog. For more information about our members and the North Carolina chapter, be sure to visit ncarolina.sla.org.

Library and Information Science students understandably are concerned about future employment, especially in an unsettled economy. When speaking before LibSci student organizations I often encourage them to look beyond traditional campus library jobs and envision their future careers more broadly as information entrepreneurs.

Specifically, I suggest their library student association place an ad in their campus newspaper or tack notices on faculty doors, offering to help organize information within any department on campus.  Most departments have no idea there is a School of Library & Information Science on campus, much less what you have to offer. Target your campus as your first market! When calls begin to come in … “Yes, I’d like one of your library science students to revamp our website” or “Might a library science student organize our student internship files into a database?” … then head on over to begin a reference interview, determine the project’s scope, and offer to organize the information physically or virtually in exchange for a practical experience, a good reference, or even a fee.
There’s a future job lurking in most every department on campus just waiting for information entrepreneurs. In the process of getting your first customers conveniently on campus, you’ll be educating campus employees about the Library & Information Science department and profession.  How do I know? When I sought to locally expand my database development business, I approached several local University departments and quickly captured several hours work per week. If Library & Information Science graduate students had gotten there first, the jobs may have been theirs!

Ann Stringfield, M.S.L.S. worked up through all the available Information Specialist ranks for 17 years in a corporate library, then fancied a change and created an independent business reselling Inmagic database software, developing databases, training, and consulting. She has been helping organizations harvest their knowledge for over 12 years as Proprietor of InfoCrofters (www.infocrofters.com.)

This week’s posts come from truly gifted professionals of the SLA North Carolina chapter. While each representative has made an effort to keep their topics inline with the central theme of SLA Future Ready 365 blog, you will notice that each post provides a unique perspective and is intended to help a variety of readers that visit the blog. For more information about our members and the North Carolina chapter, be sure to visit ncarolina.sla.org.

Being future ready for ProQuest Dialog means being able to take features from their past products and enhance them for the future.

The web and enhanced graphic user interfaces (GUI) are without question the emphasis for most professional information retrieval services today. As ProQuest Dialog continues to develop its flagship product, many of the strengths in the new product rely on the features offered through the web interface. However, as one of the oldest and authoritative information retrieval services still available, ProQuest Dialog understands that control, precision, and efficiency are common reasons many professional searchers continue to use the legacy command products. This is precisely why in an effort to be future ready ProQuest Dialog continues to offer professional searchers the choice of searching key field codes via the GUI or by commands.

For example, while it is easy enough to search using field codes in the Basic Search field illustrated below,

using the Command line interface, professional searchers can also build their strategy via the GUI and find field codes that can help them search more efficiently through their favorite databases.

Some of the new field codes that ProQuest Dialog offers users for precision command searching are:

First Author searching…

e.g. FAU(Smith, ACM)

Cited reference search…

e.g. REF(American near/2 Medical)

Cited Author search….

e.g.CAU(miller OR smith)

Cited Document Title search….

e.g. CTI(Effects and early life stress)

Cited Publication search….

e.g. CPUB(jama)

Cited Publication Year search….

e.g. AU(Cromity) and CYR(2009)

You can see a list of more field codes available on ProQuest Dialog at:

http://search.proquest.com/professional/help/webframe.html?View_Field_Codes.html

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 (Pragmatic Marketing) certified. He has received awards and honors from many associations including ALA, SLA, NCSLA, and NCLA.

This week’s posts come from truly gifted professionals of the SLA North Carolina chapter. While each representative has made an effort to keep their topics inline with the central theme of SLA Future Ready 365 blog, you will notice that each post provides a unique perspective and is intended to help a variety of readers that visit the blog. For more information about our members and the North Carolina chapter, be sure to visit ncarolina.sla.org.

Downsizing. Budget cuts. Doing more with less. Libraries are fluent in the language of a sluggish economy. The role and function of libraries are constantly evolving due to limited resources, technology, the needs and expectations of the demographic it serves, not to mention (paraphrasing from my favorite movie, My Cousin Vinny) “the biological clock” of a diverse workforce.

As library leadership restructures place and space, there needs to be an assessment of the faces within libraries for future readiness. Libraries are openly accessible to all people and should reflect the American diaspora. There is no other institution in my opinion, other than a library, where different philosophy of thoughts, cultures, political views, religious beliefs, and Harry Potter converge without the threat of another world war. However, are the faces of the professional staff in alignment to the tenets in which libraries uphold? If there are only two members of color in your organization, one professional staff member and the head of facilities, this is not the making of a diverse staff and should be addressed with the same fervor and excitement in which we tackle the perils of technologies and services for our libraries.

A factor that hiring committees consider when selecting a potential candidate is the individuals’ ability to fit in the culture of the organization. Instead of making a determination on whether a candidate will fit in the culture of their organization, leadership needs to assess how the culture within the library embrace differences and are willing to challenge the status quo. Only then will libraries embody change and tolerance within the community it serves, as well as, amongst its staff. This is real diversity in action that can effectively help the future growth of intelligence in the library profession.

Charlene Johnson is graduate student at North Carolina Central University’s School of Library and Information Sciences in Durham, NC. She is a 2011 Association of Research Libraries Career Enhancement Program Fellow (completing an eight week summer internship at the University of Washington, Seattle) and currently serves as the NCCU Special Library Association student group president. Charlene earned a bachelor’s degree from Meredith College and will receive her master’s from North Carolina Central University in December 2011 with an emphasis in special and digital libraries. She can be reached at charlenejohnson@nc.rr.com.

This week’s posts come from truly gifted professionals of the SLA North Carolina chapter. While each representative has made an effort to keep their topics inline with the central theme of SLA Future Ready 365 blog, you will notice that each post provides a unique perspective and is intended to help a variety of readers that visit the blog. For more information about our members and the North Carolina chapter, be sure to visit ncarolina.sla.org.

The future ready librarian must possess soft skills of marketing and salesmanship as well as the technical knowledge to perform day-to-day duties. In the new normal economy, those who do not provide value that the employers understand will find their employment in peril. Become the best marketer of your skills and value you can be! Here are a few suggestions to survive and be future ready!

• Know your product–You! Know your skills and how an organization can benefit from having you as an asset. Know the size, type, organization, and culture in which you wish to work and market to those employers.
• Demonstrate value–In order to stay employed, you have to understand what the employer values and how to present that information in an understandable way. This is trickier than it sounds. I happen to know of one organization where the information professionals were not allowed to talk to management!
• Hone your skills–Continue your education and tailor the learning to your strengths and the needs of your present and future employers. Take advantage of any educational support because it is a benefit to you, but you must choose to take advantage of it. Just remember, your present and future competition may be improving their skills and acquiring new ones.
• In business, “Location, Location, Location” is a common saying. In the new normal economy, ”Network, Network, Network” should be your personal mantra. Go to conferences, have business cards ready, get involved in your local library groups. Most importantly, take the time to consider which of your contacts you should meet. Being helpful to other networkers pays dividends! Good luck!

Mason is a librarian/information professional from Raleigh, NC. He graduated from Florida State University’s online program with an M.S. in Library and Information Science in 2008. He worked at Strayer University and The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences. Currently he is the Career Chair for the North Carolina Chapter of the Special Libraries Association where he is part of the resume review service development team and acts as a mentor and resume reviewer for new information professionals.