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 article originally ran in the September/October 2011 issue of Bio-IT World).

“Reevaluating the Role of the Research Librarian” http://www.bio-itworld.com/issues/2011/sept-oct/reevaluating-role-research-librarian.html

by Rya Ben-Shir (Illinois Chapter, Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Division) and Alexander Feng (Cincinnati Chapter, Competitive Intelligence and Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Divisions)

Life science companies’ decisions to reduce research librarians are “penny wise, pound foolish” – impacting the bottom line through inefficient research, longer cycle times, and more obstacles to FDA approval.
 
The Pharmaceutical & Health Technology (PHT) Division of SLA is pleased to announce the recent publication of a guest commentary in Bio-IT World (Sept-Oct 2011) written by Division members. The commentary reviews recent trends in eliminating research librarians and describes the negative impact to life sciences corporations, both as a result of the lack of the human resources and as a result of the increased dependence on free resources.   The impact of these resource changes is especially acute in life science companies, for whom getting faster FDA approval is critical, and for whom unanticipated surprises such as product deficiencies, unanticipated interactions, and FDA warning letters can negatively impact or cripple business.

The full text follows.
 
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If your image of a research librarian is the soft-spoken, bespectacled woman politely shushing you when you’re talking in the library, that outdated perception couldn’t be further from the truth. Research librarians are highly skilled data analysts and business experts playing key roles in driving company performance, particularly in life sciences organizations. They ensure the most talented project teams make the right choices, perform at their highest levels, and reach outcomes their companies are striving for.

And yet, many life science organizations—Pfizer and Genentech are just two recent examples—have cut back or eliminated their library research staff, believing the myth that everything is free on the Internet. Many more are experimenting with outsourcing research librarian services to India or China—producing unsatisfactory and low quality work.

Organizations that make these misguided “penny wise, pound foolish” decisions are failing to recognize the vital contributions that these important, skillful team members make in researching business intelligence, patent landscapes, safety signals, tracking competitors and much more.

One newly recruited scientist being introduced to his new employers’ research librarian stated: “When our research librarians were all eliminated, as many departments as could found a way to convert an open position to hang on to at least one of them for their own group. We became the haves and the have nots. A project creating and accessing the competitive landscape for a new compound we were considering in-licensing went from a couple of hours when done by a research librarian to weeks when I was left to do it…I would not work without a research library function again, if I could help it.”

Making the right decisions based on insightful analysis of the most relevant data can make a critical difference in companies whose futures rely on new product development. Adding an expert research librarian/information specialist to your “A-Team” dramatically increases your chance of success in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, where the project, product, and start-up failure rate is high.

A research librarian will ask the right questions—even the ones no one has thought to ask—and knows which databases and resources will yield the most objective and complete information to advance key projects, and place that information into context.

Research librarians bring out the best in the skills of others. They encourage the team to freely share information among themselves, and more importantly, test their ideas and hypotheses against the world of scientific and business information. The ability to draw on the expertise of others and perform detailed research improves your projects’ chances of success. Last but not least, a research librarian improves a company’s bottom line.

The Problem with Free

Of course, anyone can surf the Web’s limitless free information. But that takes time, which for most researchers is in short supply. A research librarian is able to select and expertly research the most authoritative, objective information sources. These are typically commercial databases and rarely easy to search proficiently. They can execute these complex searches in sophisticated databases, where the relevant information is extracted from “noisy” irrelevant content.

In the biopharma world, vast sums of money, perhaps even the company’s survival, depend on critical information research, information that has to be correct and complete, findings that must be placed in context, identifying the positions of your competitors and regulatory hurdles, and where new opportunities exist. The research librarian helps avoid unpleasant, untimely surprises, such as when the FDA spots a misstep early in a submission process and demands you return to stage one and start over.

Serving as both consultant and detective, often possessing a master’s degree in information and library sciences (from a program accredited by the American Library Association), research librarians are proactive, innovative, and inquisitive. A particularly valuable skill set is the reference interview, much like the physician’s history and physical, which enables research librarians to ascertain the real question behind the question. For example, if the original request is, “Tell me everything about disease X,” the research librarian figures that the real question is: “Under which circumstances could there be a false positive for the definitive lab test for disease X?” Looking ahead, the research librarian asks if any of those circumstances are relevant in the current situation. These actions ensure the targeted information is delivered efficiently and effectively.

In life sciences organizations, acquiring a competitive edge and bringing an innovative drug or technology to market demands overcoming obstacles and creating or recognizing opportunities. The role of an expert research librarian is easily overlooked, but he or she helps identify what is often unknown and helps the team establish a complete picture of the competitive and scientific landscape—from pipeline through to market.

If your organization is willing to subject all of your investment of time, funding, and hard work to the vagaries of risk and failure, then surfing through oceans of un-vetted information on the Internet is fine. But if you want to vastly improve your chances of success, whether it be identifying a lucrative research area or achieving regulatory approval, then it is time to urgently rethink your stale image of the trusted research librarian.

Written on behalf of the Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Division of the SLA.  Thanks to Andrew Clark, Praveena Raman, Bob Kowalski, Susan Zalenski and Margaret Basket for their contributions to this commentary.  For more information, visit http://bit.ly/my-a-team.

Alex Feng is the Chair-Elect of SLA’s Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Division and writes for the division blog at http://phtd.wordpress.com/.  You can contact him at 513-549-3364 or via email: ahf25du (at) gmail (dot) com.

Rya Ben-Shir was born in Montreal, Canada and received her MLS from McGill University with specialization in Medicine and Marketing Libraries. She has 20 years experience designing, building and growing new community teaching hospital libraries in Canada and the US, and 11+ years designing, building and growing a new virtual (clicks) and physical (bricks) global pharmaceutical library for a top 20 global pharma company.  In mid-2011 she embarked on an entrepreneurial consulting practice endeavor, Shir Solutions (www.shirsolutions.com), working with content creators, aggregators as well as pharma and biotech clients.

Ms. Ben-Shir has been awarded the John Cotton Dana Award for MacNeal Hospital’s Health Answers Service (1990), the Medical Library Association’s Hospital Librarian of the Year (1989), is at the Distinguised Level in the  Medical Library Association’s Academy of Health Information Professionals, and currently serves on the Dialog and Copyright Clearance Center Corporate User Advisory Boards.

Introduction (Toni Wilson – Chair, SLA CI Division)

In this post from another of our Competitive Intelligence Division experts, we focus on a specific industry application for CI. It describes how industries – in this case, the pharmaceutical industry – are continually changing and the important of adapting our CI processes to those changes in order to become and remain future ready.

by Claudia Clayton, Virginia Chapter, Business & Finance, Competitive Intelligence, Legal, and Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Divisions

Last week, I attended the Pharma CI Conference in Parsippany, NJ, expecting to hear a lot about tools of the pharmaceutical CI trade. Instead, all of the keynote sessions focused on the changes in the healthcare industry and how these would impact the way that pharmaceutical companies develop products going forward. In the end, I learned far more about the focus on outcomes in the healthcare industry and why pharma companies should be more aware of these both in and outside of the US.

One of the most interesting presentations was made by a senior executive with Ernst and Young, on Pharma 3.0. Pharma 1.0 was basically the era where pharma companies focused on blockbuster drugs, e.g. those drugs that dominate a category. Pharma 2.0 was the era of diversification, where companies that specialized in cancer drugs expanded into cholesterol medications or expanded geographically. Now we are in the Pharma 3.0 era, where drugs must begin to mirror – at least in part – the outcomes-based focus of the healthcare industry. (To find the report, go to this link or Google Pharma 3.0 + Ernst and Young .)

Here are just a few of the key thoughts in the report, which I believe apply to SLA members and those information pros that engage in or support competitive intelligence:

• Connecting information and developing insights: Companies now need to connect information across disparate sources, to involve IT management in strategy development, and to remove information silos.
• Build and operate multiple, simultaneous business models: Diverse customers and markets call for diverse business models, done in a systematic and scalable way.
• Collaborate in new ways and with new partners: The report calls for “radical collaboration” with very different partners, using customers and other stakeholders as “co-creators” and attracting non-traditional partners.
• It’s not about you: Ernst and Young tells companies they must stop pitching and start engaging – based on emerging communities and enhanced desire for personal value.
• Disrupting the value network: Incentives, metrics and standards in pharma need to be tailored to health outcomes. Although this relates specifically to the pharma industry, the principal applies to any industry that is impacted by others in our increasingly connected world.

So, if you are looking for insights, trying to provide relevant value to your clients, and interested in taking advantage of industry or product disruption rather than being negatively impacted by it, read this report. Then spend some time thinking about how to bring your programs into a 3.0 world.

Claudia Clayton is Managing Director of ViewPoint, a strategy, consulting and research firm established in 1993. She leads the competitive intelligence activities of ViewPoint on behalf of major US corporations in multiple industries. Claudia is a committed and hard-working volunteer, primarily serving the members of SLA’s CI Division and the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP). She won SCIP’s Catalyst Award in 2007 in recognition of her commitment to the CI profession. Claudia was the CI Division’s 2011 Conference Chair and currently serves as the CID’s Membership Chair as well.