By Lyndsay Rees-Jones, Europe Chapter, Knowledge Management and Leadership & Management Divisions

Since 2008 I have talked to a significant number of future librarians. I ran the Membership Support unit for CILIP with my colleague Kathy Ennis until restructuring closed the unit in October 2010. We visited LIS students at UK Universities and ran 2-3 hour professionalism sessions. Our aim was to help them short-cut our collective 50yr+ career journeys, passing on advice and experience that had proved its worth. Key points to take away were:

• Don’t undervalue what you know.
• Banish the words just and easy from your professional vocabulary.
• Reflect. Reflect. Reflect. Remember when you have learned something new, and acknowledge the difference it has made to you.
• Use our professional language with pride. Don’t dumb down.
• Consider the sort of professional that you want to be, and remember that our skills have value in every sector and every country.

So in the spirit of being Future Ready, here is a bit of personal reflection based on my career so far….

Cash’s (UK) Ltd – weaving company – particularly famous for their name tapes (think school uniforms). Unable to find a library post straight after graduating I became a management trainee. Brilliant fun, being responsible for weaving clothing labels and patches. I learned that the workplace can be a bitchy environment, as well as a political one. that I was good at representing the business at trade fares. That I was able to manage a big workload.

GEC Electrical Projects (which became subsumed into the Alstom giant as Cegelec Projects and what remains is now called Converteam ). My first professional post was as the solo Librarian and Information Office for four companies on a site with roughly 6000 employees. I learned that there was such a thing as a solo professional, and that it was a tremendously challenging yet exhilarating role. That I loved being totally in control: if I got it right it was all down to me; whereas if I got it wrong that was usually only because I felt less than professionally perfect, whereas the client was perfectly happy. That I was a good organiser, efficient and effective researcher, and that my information skills earned me respect from the engineers, accountants, surveyors, developers etc that were my clients. Gaining my Chartership added to my status.

Trioka Contracts Ltd – developed, set up and ran (part-time) a service for a contract interior design company. What fun I had playing with carpet samples, lighting catalogues and tiles. I learned that I needn’t be too precious about cataloguing and classifications. Up until this point I had been something of a perfectionist, adept at using UDC/Dewey, and suddenly it was obvious that this was overkill and I could create my own scheme! That my skills were valued and produced real business benefit.

National Grid Co Plc – I took over running the library and information service for the electrical transmitting utility, immediately following its relocation to Coventry from London. I inherited one member of staff (non-professional) giving us the grand total of 2 people to meet information needs previously managed by 5 full timers. What fun! I learned that thinking differently is a vital skill and having no baggage is a real bonus. That there is such a thing as internal consultancy. That you can be upwardly bullied, and there are people who can help and advise. That it was crucial that I was “out and about,” as a visual manifestation of the LIS service. That KM was growing in importance.

Library Association – which became CILIP in 2002 (after unifying with the Institute of Information Scientists). During my 13+ years at the UK professional body, I was variously a Professional Advisor, Special Libraries and Information Services; Workplace and Solo Advisor; Workforce Development Advisor; and Senior Advisor. Membership Support Unit. I learned that membership organisations are complex entities. That activists are important people who need adequate support. That there is real hope for the profession in the hands of the next generation. That I was a good advisor, who was at my best when sharing my own experiences.

Overall lessons learned so far…Some of the lessons were uncomfortable or painful to learn – it’s not nice being bullied by a subordinate for instance! Other lessons were real eureka moments that provided me with insight into things such as office politics and organisational insecurity. These in turn helped me adapt my delivery and communication styles, so that I could be more effective and face less antagonism or blocks. If I had indeed learnt these during my initial library studies, would I have been as effective? Or was experiencing the lessons first hand, crucial to my personal and professional development?

I suspect that the real answer is a half-way house. I hadn’t know there was such a thing as a solo professional when I graduated, and yet spent my practitioner career being one. Thankfully I accidentally found this route, as it enabled me to discover my professional persona. It also ensured that I developed skills right across the board (from shelf-dusting and inter-library loans, to strategic planning and budget management), so made me much more effective as a professional advisor. I had actually “been there and done that” more often than not. My next steps are to develop my business (Real Time Release ©) as a creative transitioner – supporting people as they move towards a more rewarding life. By reflecting on my experience to date, I think I’ve got lots to offer.

Happy futures.

Lyndsay Rees-Jones is the Owner of Real-Time-Release. She is has been an active member of SLA Europe for many years, and is currently serving as the Awards Chair.

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: