by John LeMasney
Information professionals need to be aware of and leverage mobile networks because they need to stay connected more of the time now to be truly effective. This is mostly because many other information professionals are already thoroughly connected which raises the bar as to how connected you have to be. In particular, mobile devices, networks and services should be explored and adopted so that the information professional can make use of the information being exchanged by others. Geolocation. transliteracy, convergence, and connectivity are key factors to determine if you are future ready.

Looking for more? You can see John LeMasney’s extended writeup and slides from his recent talk on the future of mobile computing to the SLA’s Princeton-Trenton chapter at http://bit.ly/lemasneymobile.

John LeMasney is a father, husband, technologist, consultant, artist, designer, writer, presenter, open source evangelist and open standards advocate. He works at Princeton University as the Manager of Educational Technology Training and Outreach. You can reach him at lemasney@gmail.com and follow his day to day work and screencasts at http://365sketches.org or see his recent projects and developments at http://john.lemasney.com.

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.

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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.

By Sean Smith, Maryland and Washington DC Chapters, Legal and Pharmaceutical & Health Technology Divisions

Libraries that are increasing their online presence—building information portals, intranets and other online resources—frequently come up against a new kind of challenge: How to effectively drive usage of online resources? This can be especially challenging for libraries that have limited marketing resources or experience.

Believe it or not, this is the exactly the dilemma that Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin faced just seven years ago when they founded Facebook on a shoestring budget.

I just published an article on The Huffington Post entitled, How Facebook Really Won the Social Media War: Viral Marketing Lessons from The Social Network. The article examines how a couple of college students, with almost no resources, marketing budget or staff launched and built the most successful social networking Web site ever. More importantly, the article demonstrates the viral marketing lessons that information professionals can learn from watching “The Social Network.”

The lessons include:

• Why having the right email lists is critically important to a successful launch;
• Why it is more effective to reach “influencers” or trendsetters than to try to reach the entire universe;
• How one email got more than 5,000 to register for Facebook in the first two weeks; and
• What time-tested marketing strategy is the real secret of Facebook’s phenomenal success?

Click here to read the full article.

Driving usage of online resources is by no means easy, but as “The Social Network” shows, with some planning, patience and perseverance, information professionals can learn to effectively drive usage to online resources. However, most SLA members have the added advantage of marketing to an internal audience with shared business objectives. The challenge, therefore, becomes how to identify specific audiences within the organization and find clever and fresh ways to capture their attention and engage them.

I encourage you to use this forum to share stories about any clever and fresh marketing ideas that you have tried to boost online information resource usage. Please leave a comment below or email me.

Sean Smith is Director of Marketing for InfoDesk, Winner: 2011 CODiE Award for “Best Business Information Resource“. InfoDesk specializes in information management solutions that help integrate, deliver and share content resources more quickly, cost effectively and securely. Follow Sean Smith on Twitter or email him directly with questions or comments at sean.smith@infodesk.com.

by John Digilio, Chicago Chapter, Legal Division Chair

Nervous energy.  It is everywhere these days.  It is that feeling in the pit of your stomach or at the back of your mind that something might not be quite right.  As discussions on the future of libraries become more pressing, there is nervous energy.  As we continue to reel from the library closings and job losses that seemed to gain momentum during the recent global economic crisis, there is nervous energy.  In fact, there is so much nervous energy in our industry these days that I dare say it is palpable to each of us as library and information professionals.  The good news is that we have an important choice to make.  We can let this energy weigh heavily upon us and drag us down or we can choose to harness and channel it in ways that make us truly future ready.

What is gripping so many in our industry these days is nothing less than a real and warranted fear of the unknown.  What is to become of libraries and librarians in a world that is increasingly dominated by virtual interaction, technological interfaces, and instant electronic gratification?  It is an almost overwhelming contemplation.  It is also a necessary one.  In his excellent series on management skills, The Leadership Pickles, Bob Pharrell talks about the negative impact this fear of the unknown can have on workers and productivity.  If left unchecked, it can sap some of most integral human commodities: enthusiasm, confidence and integrity.  In his course, Pharrell urges managers to meet this fear of the unknown head on.  As a librarian, I believe this is not only sound advice for managers but an urgent call to action for each one of us, regardless of level or title.  As the old adage goes, “When life hands you lemons . . . “.

I believe that when it comes to the future of libraries and librarians, the tech-laden world of tomorrow is still very much our oyster.  There are plenty of pearls to be had and nobody – I repeat, NOBODY – knows how to find them better than we.  The trick is to not let nervous energy and fear of the unknown drag us down in our pursuit.  When we are having these vital discussions in our meetings with colleagues, on discussion boards, and with our bosses and employers, we have to come to the table prepared.  I personally recommend a three-pronged attack.  Take that nervous energy by the horns and channel it into optimism, activism, and creativity.  If you can do that, tomorrow and all of its unknowns will not know what hit them.  Note that I am not saying this will be easy.  I am saying it is essential.  Here’s the breakdown:

by Camille Ann Brewer, New York Chapter, Museums, Arts & Humanities Division

I have been working as curator of contemporary art for the last 12 years.  Three years ago, I decided to return to school to earn a MLIS degree.  My thought was to have a “back-up” plan of working as a librarian as I watched employment opportunities dry up in the museum and gallery world.  Far more than a back up, the training has greatly augmented and enhanced my work as an art advisor and curator.  The entire program was conducted on-line; therefore I learned the course material in tandem with technological tools used by the university.  This exposure to new technologies has provided me with options that I had never considered before entering the degree program.  I am now creating blogs to support special exhibitions and their ancillary educational programs, building databases for private collectors that are designed in accordance with Getty Research Institute metadata standards for art objects, and exploring the possibilities of designing mobile device applications that make cataloging objects easier for small institution and private art collectors.

I currently spend a great deal of time traveling to clients to manage and appraise their collections.  After a series of bad airline flights and endless airport security “theater,” my hope over the next year is to minimize my travel by developing new and improved methods of collection management using the new tools being developed now in today’s market place.  One of my goals is to bring newly developed museum metadata standards to private collectors.  As art objects move from private hands to major cultural institutions, the respective metadata will migrate seamlessly into the larger database systems.

In my mind, being Future Ready means keeping abreast of the latest developments in technology while engaging creative thinking as to how these new tools and systems can augment what I do as an arts professional.   I am more excited now than I was five years ago about the opportunities that are presenting themselves as I approach my career from an interdisciplinary perspective.  It is in the intersection of these disparate disciplines where the excitement and hope for the future begins.

Based in New York City, Camille Ann Brewer is a fine art advisor and appraiser of contemporary American art and traditional African art. She is a member of the New York Chapter of SLA.  More information about Ms. Brewer can be located at www.cabfineart.com

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 Kate W. Flewelling

A colleague recently dubbed me the “nomadic, geriatric librarian.”  At 32, I am hardly geriatric, but I do provide information support to those who treat our hospital’s oldest patients, and I leave my office (and the library) as often as possible.  I am mobile, and busy clinicians and students need me to be where they are.

At my institution, an academic medical center, the “ACE Team” (Acute Care for the Elderly) meets once a day in a hospital conference room (geriatrics patients can be on any service–cardiology, neurology, medicine–making bedside rounds impractical).  ACE Team members include an attending physician, a post-residency fellow, a nurse practitioner or physician assistant, a pharmacist and residents/medical students on two week geriatrics rotations.   As cases are presented, I listen for clinical information needs.  Often, attendees will have additional literature search requests or a request for “one good article on….” or “clinical practice guidelines for….”  If I think a question can be answered in less than five minutes, I look it up on the spot on an iPad (I have also used an iPod Touch).  Other questions are taken back to the library for prompt response.

Schedule permitting, I have been attending rounds twice a week since October 2010.  In that short time, I have been accepted wholeheartedly into the ACE Team, including being invited to the division’s holiday potluck.  I send welcome emails to residents and medical students as they start their rotation.  The welcome emails contain a link to a reading list on RefShare that I created in consultation with the team.  I have received questions from all members of the team and have had in-office consultations with a number of them.

While I feel like I am providing a valuable service, I am constantly learning myself.  Going to rounds is like visiting another country whose language I can read but am not yet fluent.  I have a much richer understanding of the context in which clinicians work and am able to hear in real time their thought process.  I am a better librarian to all my health sciences professional patrons as a result.  I have also gained invaluable life lessons on what kind of “old age” I want for myself and family members.

Some advice for those who would like to start rounding:

• Ask for a meeting with the department chair to discuss how the library might better serve the department and mention rounding as an option.
• Before the meeting, do some reading on the specialty and current issues.  Attend the department’s grand rounds a few times.
• Become an expert on point-of-care databases, especially those with mobile versions.
• Be as mobile as you can with available technology.
• Be prepared to explain what you are doing there and the services you provide.
• Listen, listen, listen.

Kate W. Flewelling is Coordinator of Instruction at the  Upstate Medical University Health Sciences Library, Syracuse, NY.  Her email address is flewellk@upstate.edu.

by Steven A. Lastres, New York Chapter, Knowledge Management Division

Since the earliest days of libraries, librarians have served as knowledge managers. Whether they were maintaining the scrolls at the Library of Alexandria, creating the catalog for the House of Wisdom (a Ninth Century Islamic library), or assembling annotated links for the law firm intranet, law librarians have always been in the forefront of organizing information and adding value to it. Librarians have long excelled at getting information into the hands of the people who need it. The precise definition of knowledge management (KM) is an elusive one, but one pillar of KM practice holds that knowledge management “is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets.”¹

Steven Lastres

Becoming Business Managers

What has changed is that the librarian needs to wear a new hat–that of a business manager. The array of tools available to today’s librarian has driven that change. No longer restricted to offering only upon-request services, librarians can instead embrace a broader view of their professional role. They actively manage their organization’s information assets rather than passively respond to requests.

KM, as evolved from traditional librarianship, today means identifying business opportunities within our organization to help our users practice more efficiently and effectively. Librarians need to understand how our users work, not just anticipate what their information needs will be.

As librarians expand their professional roles, their efforts at KM must align with their organization’s business objectives. Librarians need to become business managers. If we take the business view, librarians are selling a product (knowledge and information) to a market (our users) that needs to be serviced effectively (the right product), efficiently (at the right time), and cost-effectively (at the right price). Figuring out how to improve upon that business model is what knowledge management is all about. When it comes to knowledge management, the emphasis should be on management.

Why do librarians make good knowledge managers? The answer may be that librarians tend to be more eager to adopt new ways of sharing information than our users. Librarians look at new technologies and services with a critical eye to understand how to meet current and emerging information needs. KM is not technology for technology’s sake. Instead, librarians focus on content and its seamless delivery. In many ways, they can decipher what our users need before our users even ask. (After all, that’s what reference interviews are for!) They know the resources, they know how the resources are delivered, and they know how to find the information that our users ask for.

In addition to their skills, when it comes to knowing the content available, most librarians fit well into the KM mold because of their technical sophistication. Today’s librarians are perfectly at home in the online world. And unlike the past, when any project that lived on a server was automatically the ward of the IT department, KM projects are now managed by librarians. Library staff members drive the selection of tools to deliver content, the adoption of interactive services such as wikis and blogs, and the promotion of KM applications such as work product retrieval. This is a major change in librarianship, in which librarians are innovators and technologists, as well as content managers. Most librarians bring considerable technical savvy to their professional work. Librarians, in short, should select the information resources that best fit the practices they support, but they also should be involved in selecting the best delivery platforms. That includes managing the graphic display of information on portal or intranet pages and creating a Web-based presentation that is easy to use and search.

As librarians adapt to a changing world, it’s a good idea to understand some of the changes they face, including these:

• Users expect to receive information faster than ever.
• Users expect to have no impediments to get the information they need.
• Users depend on knowledge managers to keep up with KM innovations and best practices.

As knowledge management becomes more ingrained in corporations and law firms, KM managers need to become experts in three specialized fields: librarianship, legal technology, and business management. Librarians need to understand the technical possibilities–not just the nuts and bolts of the software but also the realistic research needs of the lawyers.

Change is propelling librarians forward in a world where they must adapt to new ways of thinking about the information over which they are stewards. This changing world means new opportunities for librarians, as librarians redefine themselves as KM managers who create value for the firm by effectively managing the information for which they are professionally responsible.

¹ Megan Santosus & Jon Surmacz, “The ABCs of Knowledge Management”, CIO Magazine, 2001.

Steven A. Lastres is Director of Library and Knowledge Management at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. His e-mail address is salastres@debevoise.com.

by Marilyn Bromley, Washington DC Chapter

When Cindy Romaine announced Future Ready as the theme of her presidential year, I thought “what a great idea/slogan/catchphrase! What does it mean???” So I continued to ponder the question, confident that the fog would lift and the sun illuminate the way.

As it turned out, after thinking some more, I understood what Future Ready meant to me in a negative way – when I realized what I was NOT doing. 

According to the Outsell report Information Management Trends and Benchmarks 2010 by Roger Strouse (November 15, 2010), information managers need to “get on the device train.” 37% of IM functions currently deliver content to handheld devices, but that means that 63% of us do not. Roger writes, “The device train has left the station and a majority of information managers are left milling about on the platform.” 

More and more content is being created and delivered specifically for mobile devices, so we don’t have the excuse that there is nothing to offer. Since I work for a legal publisher, I know this to be true.

Further, our workplaces are full of employees whose lives live on a handheld device, and the idea that they think we’re irrelevant sends shivers down my spine. Outsell feels that we need to have “a stronger sense of urgency in catering to these platforms” and I agree.

So what am I doing to be Future Ready?

Here in the BNA Library, we’ve just bought an iPad, and some of us have Kindles and Nooks and many of us have iPhones and Androids. With all these devices, at our next Open House we plan to have a petting zoo. It may be that only the managers of Gens X & Y will be the ones who show up, but if we can help them speak the same language as their staff, and “live the future” too, then we’ve done a good thing. As an additional benefit, we can show what’s out there in the legal marketplace, and help managing editors imagine BNA’s next “killer app.”

It’s nice to see all of you here on the platform, but let’s get on that train!

Marilyn Bromley is Library Director at BNA and past-chair of the Social Science Division.  Her work interests are competitive intelligence, ROI, and copyright issues.

by Brent Mai, 2012 SLA President

We recently celebrated the first anniversary of the opening of the new library at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon.  At 74,000 square feet over three floors, it is truly a transformational building, serving a multitude of essential roles in the campus learning environment. 

“But I thought books were a thing of the past,” I heard people say. “Why would anyone build a new library today?”  Trust me!  This thought even crossed the minds of some campus administrators. But these comments indicate a misconception about the role that the library as place plays in contemporary higher education.

With this in mind, our team set about designing a very adaptable building that could be relatively easily reconfigured as space needs and usages change in the coming years.  Current needs called for room for about 200,000 volumes, teaching and meeting rooms, spaces for student interaction, faculty and staff offices, and a climate-controlled archive.  But each of these use-defined spaces needed to be reconfigurable to accommodate a host of unknown future space needs.

With these practical needs in mind, it was also critical that we create a place where students actually wanted to be.  In consideration of the variety of learning styles, we began by creating hard and soft spaces, loud and quiet spaces, and group and individual spaces.  A mix of soft and comfortable seating arrangements were interspersed with more traditional tables and study carrels with wooden chairs.  Ten group study rooms accommodating various numbers of students were distributed throughout the building.  Quiet study areas were created on the upper floors of the building. Reliable wireless access and abundant electrical outlets were essential.  A café added to the comfort factor of the space.

For us, the answer was to build flexibility into the structural components of the building. Several areas currently being used as classroom and meeting spaces have been structurally designed to hold the weight load of stacks and/or compact shelving – should that be needed.  “False floors” have been installed in a number of spaces to accommodate future changes in technology needs.  Most of the furniture is mobile – to accommodate the multi-use needs of public spaces and the varying instructional styles of faculty members in teaching spaces.

My colleagues, planning library spaces with an eye on the future isn’t rocket science.  But intentionally planning for flexibility in new construction is definitely a component of being Future Ready!

There’s a photo of the new library at http://cvgs.cu-portland.edu/about/cu_library.cfm.

Brent Mai is University Librarian at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, and has been elected as 2012 President of SLA.