Hello from Wisconsin! We are delighted to contribute a week’s worth of postings from the Midwest! You’ll see that Wisconsin isn’t just about the cheese—our chapter boasts 120 members from diverse environments: corporate, law, academic, and other settings, many of us from unique national companies and associations. Our state’s two library schools have renewed focus on special librarianship and growing interest from our student members is evident. We are an active, enthusiastic chapter and happy to contribute our thoughts on future readiness! It’s great in the Dairy State!

When I decided to participate in the SLA Future Ready 365 blog, choosing a topic was a challenge. My background is diverse, but I am new to the field of library and information science, recently receiving an MLIS and am a job seeker. I wondered what I could offer SLA’s experienced, educated and varied readership. There are many things that are exciting about the field of special libraries including sharing information and revelations about personal and professional development. “Write what you know” said Mark Twain (and others); so, I reflected on the past few years.

The knowledge that not everything can be learned in the classroom is apparent – now, even more so than when I received my undergraduate degree (many years ago!); academic study does not fully prepare us for the real world of work, fulfillment and success. It is even clearer to me that the responsibility is on the individual to expand his/her knowledge base in creative ways. Some take part in fieldwork and internships, some do volunteer work, some blog, and some create entrepreneurial businesses. Social media offers many ways to connect with people of like minds, and networking is even more crucial today. One significant opportunity, however, is often forgotten or set aside for a later date: membership in a professional organization.

Organizations, especially SLA-Special Libraries Association, have diverse memberships with rich backgrounds and wide-ranging responsibilities, interests and personalities. Becoming a member is (and should be) more than paying a dues statement. Taking advantage of all an association has to offer takes work, but reaps huge rewards. Students and professionals alike should be reminded of the huge number of programs and the assistance that associations offer. Here are a few of the benefits of an association membership – especially our own SLA.

• Learn: Industry knowledge is enhanced by understanding competencies, ethics, trends, and salary and other surveys. Understand what your association stands for and offers its members.
• Research: Associations offer wide and deep industry materials, LIS developments, resources, and scholarships and internships information via websites, blogs, newsletters and job postings. Access, read and use them.
• Network: Connect with library professionals, peers, students, faculty, industry experts, friends and potential employers. It is critical for success.
• Participate: Be active in SLA. Join divisions in your field of study and others groups that interest you, local chapter leadership teams, national committees and discussion boards. You truly get back a lot when you give of your time and knowledge.
• Share: Get involved in mentoring programs, LinkedIn Groups and Discussions. Meet with those outside your career field to advocate for special librarians. Spread the good news about who we are and what we can do.
• Grow: Develop new skills, expand your knowledge, gain confidence and have fun at local, state and national chapter meetings, seminars, webinars, conferences and committees. Professional and personal development is a life-long learning process.

Through my membership in professional associations, I have been involved in many worthwhile and enjoyable activities. I attended the SLA national conference in Philadelphia – a wonderful experience! I also gave a presentation to a faculty-student group on my international and independent study experiences; organized a educational seminar co-sponsored by an association and my library school; developed programs for a women’s networking group; attended numerous sessions at a state library conference; joined a mentoring program in SLA’s CID (Competitive Intelligence Division); and am a member of a steering committee in a field that interests me. I also continue to participate in many university alumni and other networking groups, contribute to several LinkedIn Groups, consult for a real estate board of directors, and volunteer at my local library and in a childhood development program. Have I done all that I could to become an active association member? No, not yet… that is an ongoing process and a goal to keep in my sights. The benefits of being involved in an association are endless. Get (more) involved in SLA today. Enjoy your membership!

Marilynn Manross received her MLIS from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies in August 2011. A non-traditional student, her graduate school experience included a study abroad in Paris, an independent study “Corporate Librarianship in France” and three scholarships (one to attend SLA 2011 in Philadelphia). With administrative and financial experience in diverse industries — research, operations, office management and investment portfolio administration — she is currently exploring opportunities in a corporate research department, library or information center. Her next job may be located in her native Milwaukee or as far away as New Mexico, Virginia, Canada or Europe. Marilynn highly values her memberships in SLA, ALA, WLA-Wisconsin Libraries Association, SCIP-Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals, Alpha Kappa Psi Professional Business Fraternity and Alliance Française de Milwaukee.

Hello from Wisconsin! We are delighted to contribute a week’s worth of postings from the Midwest! You’ll see that Wisconsin isn’t just about the cheese—our chapter boasts 120 members from diverse environments: corporate, law, academic, and other settings, many of us from unique national companies and associations. Our state’s two library schools have renewed focus on special librarianship and growing interest from our student members is evident. We are an active, enthusiastic chapter and happy to contribute our thoughts on future readiness! It’s great in the Dairy State!

To be Future Ready, I think all comes down to making connections with your users/clients. Ask them questions, listen to them, find out what their interests are and then connect them to the information and resources they need in a timely and cost-effective manner. Be a trusted partner and keep things as simple as possible!

Diane Gurtner received her MLIS from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She is currently an Information Scientist in Research, Development & Quality at Kraft Foods/Oscar Mayer. She was previously employed in the Corporate Information Center of an insurance and financial services company. Diane has served the SLA Wisconsin Chapter in several board roles including Secretary, Program Chair and President.

Hello from Wisconsin! We are delighted to contribute a week’s worth of postings from the Midwest! You’ll see that Wisconsin isn’t just about the cheese—our chapter boasts 120 members from diverse environments: corporate, law, academic, and other settings, many of us from unique national companies and associations. Our state’s two library schools have renewed focus on special librarianship and growing interest from our student members is evident. We are an active, enthusiastic chapter and happy to contribute our thoughts on future readiness! It’s great in the Dairy State!

I remember Atari: Little square blob flies around the mostly blank screen while you and a friend wrestle with the joystick and its single red button to score points and win. Then came Mario (and a few more buttons)… Eventually, video games came with a mandatory start tutorial where you guided your character to jump and run around the screen to demonstrate you had sufficient skill to begin playing the game!

Remember when you could walk into a library and just use the card catalogue to find the stuff you needed? Simple, easy‐to‐grasp, low‐tech. And no, cataloguing did not spring fully formed from the ground; there was so so much work put into making that card catalogue system easy, usable, predictable, standardized… And finally we seem to have gotten through the dark ages of figuring out how to get our records web‐accessible in a way that makes sense to users. In many public libraries, records are now married to Amazon or LibraryThing records to better utilize the very familiar navigation that web‐saavy patrons intuitively understand.

Yes, one can also argue that a physical card catalogue requires training to use properly – how many kids these days would know how to use one? – and you’d be right. But it used to be the adage “teaching someone to fish and you’d feed him for a lifetime” held true. Nowadays, you can teach someone to fish but next week you’ll likely watch in frustration as they attempt to harpoon an angry bird with their fishing rod – the evolution is that fast and varied.

Example: This past month I ran two identical training sessions, one week apart, on the use of free online resources. My presentation had screen shots and hotlinks to the websites I was highlighting… During the second session, I was surprised to discover that one website’s entire layout had drastically changed, already outdating the information I’d passed along to the previous group! Also close to home: how many times have you run a training session on a digital resource and found that you need to explain how the print or save button will behave because it doesn’t behave as you would “normally” assume it would? (Yes, I’m talking to you, [Insert favorite subscription database with a wonky interface here]!)

Again, for the most part we’ve gotten through the messy period of databases finding themselves: the My Account button is now generally located in the accepted upper‐righthand location, etc etc… but there are still no standards. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve logged into a subscription resource only to spend more time trying to find the log out button than it took to locate, print, and deliver the article I sought. To their credit, many mainstream databases are currently ditching their old layouts (and even algorithms) to give people a Google‐y experience. Several major publishers that come to mind actually have touted in training sessions how “like Google” their simple layout is. (Though some have, sadly, buried Boolean searching in the process.) Overall, navigations are improving – partially as the web matures (long live the dynamic web!), partially as different tech for accessing the web matures (huzzah for smart phones!).

One saving grace, oddly enough, may be the mergers. I recently attended a LawLibConversation on legal publishing mergers, where the panel discussed positive and negative outcomes of such mergers. One major benefit discussed at the time: the navigation of these interfaces can sometimes drastically improve after a merger.

Cue my “Future Ready” bit. Librarians – be a part of this conversation. As platforms boil down to certain standard looks/feels/tastes, it would behoove us, as people who know information seeking behavior better than most, to try to engage in this process when possible. And if it’s not possible to get in that door, we should at the very least make sure we’re on top of the industry buzz. E.g. I’m keeping an excited eye on responsive web design *hint hint*.

Megan Wiseman is the Librarian for Weiss Berzowski Brady LLP in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is currently the Vice President for the Law Librarians Association of Wisconsin and tweets @LibraryatLaw.

Hello from Wisconsin! We are delighted to contribute a week’s worth of postings from the Midwest! You’ll see that Wisconsin isn’t just about the cheese—our chapter boasts 120 members from diverse environments: corporate, law, academic, and other settings, many of us from unique national companies and associations. Our state’s two library schools have renewed focus on special librarianship and growing interest from our student members is evident. We are an active, enthusiastic chapter and happy to contribute our thoughts on future readiness! It’s great in the Dairy State!

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always gotten there first, and is waiting for it.”

-Terry Pratchett-

Eigengrau is the “color” seen by the eye in perfect darkness. Essentially, it is the absence of light, of illumination, and for this exercise, of knowledge. If we compare this to the practices of organizations, just how comfortable are we with making decisions in the dark?

Librarians are often responsible for the collection, retrieval, storage, analysis, and synthesis of information. Keepers of the Light, if you will. Therefore librarians are brokers of enlightened decision making. The difference between guesswork and effective strategic direction. Organizations all too often take for granted how little they know about the subject at hand, however they also take for granted just how much information is already within their organization, and often within the library. A ‘Future Ready’ Library is of no real benefit unless it is providing ‘Future Ready’ decision support, knowledge awareness, and illuminating the path ahead.

“Future Ready” capability comes from “Future Ready” information. An Information Horizon exists between what is already known within the organization and industry, and what will, can, and might be known in the future. While exceptions do exist, the source and method of collection is as important as the data itself for equipping one’s organization for the future. Market research, focus groups, industry reports, data analysis & modeling, syndicated content, databases, et al. can be essential sources for decision making, though this data needs to be understood as coming from within the information horizon. It is effectively repurposing and consolidating already-known information into long-winded briefs and massive pivot tables of data. The future requires more, and you’ll find this on the far side of the information horizon.

What organizations need to expand their information horizon, and illuminate their position in the market doesn’t fit well into PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets, and pithy quotes about “next quarter.” Expanding into new frontiers and conquering the darkness is tricky business, and more often than not the information needed for the future comes from a series of data points and sources that may seem unrelated. Knowing where to look for the information, how to find it, and what to do with it is where dark turns to light, risk to reward, possibility to profit. Intelligence collection, news monitoring, wargaming, and futurism looks at the far side of the information horizon, forging the path for what will happen, not what already has.

The quality of intelligence gleaned about the future is paramount. If a market research report is errant in a few data metrics it might only change a few percentage points, or less. However, if your intelligence reports are off, it might be the difference between a completely different product launch, a different quarter, region, market, or nothing at all. If you base decisions off of this wayward data, darkness may be your least concern. Eigengrau, the color you actually see in perfect darkness is actually lighter than the black of the night sky. The light emitted from a star shines contrastfull to the otherwise unknown blackness of space. Eigengrau is a shade of grey, not black. Therefore no data at all is superior to the false knowledge of misappropriated data. Nags Head, North Carolina provides a prudent example of such faulty data. In the early 1800s a group of pirates known as the Nags Head “Bankers” supplied merchant vessels with ‘false data,’ taking a horse with a lantern tied around its neck, they would lead it back and forth atop a coastline hill at night. To passing vessels this appeared to be a distant ship and they believed it to be a safe route through the treacherous Outer Banks. Until that data led them straight into the rocky coastline where the looters would plunder the ship, often making for a fatal mistake for the ships’ crew.

Blue Ocean markets lie ahead for your organization. Your Future Ready library is the Crow’s Nest, compass, and knowledge nexus of your organization. Your goal for the future is not only to chart attractive growth markets, but to identify the treacherous and perilous as well – delivering the difficult information, as well as the desired. In economic climates such as the current, organizations can be one false data point away from ruin; however so are your competing organizations. The unique advantage and difference can be the library – you. And the good thing about discovering information about the future is that you don’t have to wait for it to happen, you can start right now.

Zach Steltenpohl is the Sales & Marketing Manager for Aurora WDC, which provides news monitoring, primary research, and training to some of the world’s most respected companies. He is an active member of SLA-WI chapter and various SCIP chapters.

Hello from Wisconsin! We are delighted to contribute a week’s worth of postings from the Midwest! You’ll see that Wisconsin isn’t just about the cheese—our chapter boasts 120 members from diverse environments: corporate, law, academic, and other settings, many of us from unique national companies and associations. Our state’s two library schools have renewed focus on special librarianship and growing interest from our student members is evident. We are an active, enthusiastic chapter and happy to contribute our thoughts on future readiness! It’s great in the Dairy State!

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade…” is a mantra we often hear bandied about, and with it often comes resignation. Nonetheless, to be “future ready,” we must change our attitudes about circumstances, and confront the curves life throws as growth opportunities, not traumatic horrors.

Three years ago, my comfortable, fairly established and defined career as a full-time association research librarian abruptly changed with reduction to a part-time schedule—four days a week. I felt deluged with uncertainty and lemons.

I allowed myself the luxury of a brief hiatus for frustration, angst, and wonderings, and then realized that mindset was a waste of time. I realized the new schedule created an opportunity— the additional day per week would allow me to try new things I hadn’t been able to do as a full-timer.

With this extra day, I discovered aspects of myself I didn’t know existed:

• I’ve enjoyed “stay-at-home mom” status for the first time, even if only temporarily.
• I considered a career change to court reporting and went back to school to explore this option—and failed miserably! But in this “failure” I realized my true calling is the profession for which I am already academically prepared.
• I next accepted the opportunity to teach two sections of information literacy at the undergraduate level to many students drawn from a largely underserved population, several of whom faced astounding life challenges…and I’d never taught anything before. But I did it, successfully, and made some wonderful connections with many of my students.

Meanwhile, my research librarian job has required that I adapt. And I’m enjoying it, as I explore heretofore untapped abilities. I’m now a published writer at my association and am reinventing my role as information professional in other proactive ways, with a positive attitude of willingness and flexibility. It seems the biggest challenges often can bring the biggest rewards.

I also accepted an invitation from my SLA chapter to join the board as president-elect and program chair for 2011. This, too, has been a remarkable opportunity for personal and professional growth. I enjoy meeting my colleagues and interacting with our vendor partners, and I’ve enhanced my resume. My own attendance at SLA events is a very different and enlightening experience in a leadership capacity. These connections and experiences are invaluable.

Here are several guidelines that can help any of us become “future ready”:

• Identify your personal life and career priorities and goals, and find a balance.
• Discover your strengths and weaknesses.
• “Failure” offers experience and potential for future success.
• Don’t underestimate what you can achieve.
• Be flexible and find new choices when presented with “unwanted” change.
• Know what makes you happy.
• Be open to learning about yourself and others through interactions with people of all ages, backgrounds, and life experiences.
• It’s fun to try new things!
• One is never a “finished product,” and commitment to lifelong learning is critical to personal growth.

Recently, someone asked me where I see myself in five years. I can’t make predictions, and five years ago I wouldn’t have guessed my current realities and accomplishments.

I’m confident I’ll be in a good place, though. The future starts now, not years from now. All of us can learn job specifics and technology as practicalities. More important is that we’re proactive—not only from 9-5 but with an ongoing positive attitude and enthusiasm for continual learning and personal growth.

We build our futures on the many new and different environments and experiences we seek and find. This self-knowledge, proactivity, and forging of connections enables us to move ahead without trepidation. And that’s what future success is all about. Be a go-getter! Know thyself! Lemonade is actually a refreshing beverage.

Is your glass half empty, or half full?

Lora Kloth is Research Librarian at Credit Union National Association, Madison, Wisconsin, and President-Elect of SLA’s Wisconsin Chapter.

Note: This article first appeared in Front Line, the newsletter of CUNA.  The views expressed in this piece are Lora Kloth’s and her’s alone and do not reflect the views of Credit Union National Association (CUNA).