Fairfield County Chapter
Members In Print
Note: Congratulations to Bill Langham of Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. Bill was the winner of the FCC/SLA 15th Anniversary student essay contest.
Where I hope to be and what I predict I will be doing on my 15th anniversary as a Library Information Professional in 2012 and beyond...
As information users grow in computer literacy, the information management function must grow with them. (Miriam A. Drake in Special Libraries (Oct 82))
Non-technical issues that grow out of technical innovations and changes are seldom given as much attention as they warrant. (Carol Tenopir reviewing “Online Future at ASIS’s 12th Mid-Year Meeting” in Library Journal (July 1983).)
Preparation to answer the question posed in the title above prompted me to look 15 years back in the library literature - to get some sense of where librarians thought their world was headed and what should be done about it. The general sense seemed to be that change is inevitable and constant, library schools are failing to adequately prepare library students for the real world, and that technology would likely be the driving force shaping the profession.
These factors seem more than faintly reminiscent of today’s library literature - change is accelerating, technology continues to impact the way in which we serve our clients/patrons/endusers (take your pick), and why can’t the library schools turn out graduates able to hit to all fields.
I suspect that 15 years on, the literature will still be focused on change, what are we to do about it, and how will the latest development in Information Technology (IT) affect the life of the special librarian. This essay will briefly discuss the points being made 15 years ago, describe the evolution of the demands of today’s endusers and finally, offer an outline of the job I might find myself in 15 years hence.
Looking back, Carol Tenopir’s article reviewing the 1983 ASIS 12th Mid-year conference, touched on everything from Martha Williams’ declaration of 1982 as the “year of the microcomputer” and assertion that the full impact of the new technology has yet to be felt, discussion of its “great impact on online searching” and the conclusion that the proliferation of online services (240), database providers (800) and databases (1600) providing digital information would mean increased respect for intermediaries and lead to the treatment of information specialists as co-professionals. An American Libraries (February 1983) news column announced the inauguration of Information Management programs at two library schools, geared to “respond to the needs of the Information Age.” Michael Koenig, writing in Special Libraries (April 1983) offered survey results revealing “major discrepancies between what practitioners regard as important” and what library schools regard as the “necessary core.” Koenig contends that library education should not be an “institution-based” domain but must teach students the “more conceptual” knowledge of how to put information away and find it again. Referring specifically to the “blending of boundaries between special librarianship, records management, office automation, database administration, information management, information resources management, and so forth” Koenig implores special librarians to get involved in the accreditation process and “impel” the library schools to expand the definition of the profession.
Two additional articles from the early Eighties, “Information Management
and Special Librarianship” (Drake, Special Libraries, October 1982) and
“A Paradigm Shift in Library Science” (Cochrane, Information Technology
and Libraries, March 1983) serve to tie the above discussion together.
Drake writes that the value of the special library has long been (Handy,
1911) the delivery of the right information, at the right time, to the
right place and in the right shape. Cochrane describes the perceived
change in the way that information seekers use the online catalog - to
locate topical information rather than searching for known items. Cochrane
predicts, correctly, that this change will alter the way catalogs are built
and warns that unless more resources are dedicated to improving catalog
function to satisfy user needs, “the technology of online catalogs will
dictate the science of online catalogs.” Cochrane argues that the challenge
for the library profession is not how to convert the card catalog to an
OPAC but to make “unifunctional catalogs into multifunctional catalogs
where known item AND topical subject searches can be accomplished. Combining
Cochrane’s call for taking advantage of technology’s ability to expedite
subject searches by providing lots of access points with the Drake/Handy
exhortation to deliver exactly what the
enduser wants/needs to wherever it’s needed brings us to the
present day.
Today’s user has desktop access to such an extravagant amount of information as to be almost laughable - unless you’re trying to find something. A recent Online “Successful Manager” column (Stear, November/December 1997) dwells on the concept of “technology enabled content” and the ramifications of a battle for which internal entity, Information Services or the Information Resource Center, will ultimately supervise, administer, and facilitate its selection and dissemination within the organization. As information types and formats expand, and endusers demand just-in-time delivery of just-what-I-need to just-where-I-want-it information, information professionals will be expected to possess the ability to facilitate such events. Technology enabled content - found in digital and/or virtual libraries, push/pull, the Internet and World Wide Web - Special Librarians are faced daily with the technological side of information manage-ment. Tomorrow’s Information Specialist will be expected to deal with many aspects of the above as new technology is introduced, endusers become increasingly sophisticated, and information continues to explode. Another Online article last summer offered a Chinese-menu-type list of New Job Titles for Information Professionals. The reader was invited to combine a Rank from Column A with a Title from Column B serving a Function from Column C. My picks, reflecting my interest in Information Management, were along the lines of:
Access Coordinator
Access Administrator
Access Facilitator
Electronic Access Facilitator
Electronic Resources Librarian
Cybrarian
Such an information expert would report to the Knowledge Manager or Chief Learning Officer of the organization. The knowledge manager’s job description is built upon the premise that each organization has intellectual capital that must be “explicitly managed.” Responsible for its “collection and connection”, the KM must be able to inculcate an atmosphere of knowledge-sharing built around “communities of practice” - groups within every organization where knowledge is created - where the experts and thinkers reside. Thomas Stewart in Fortune (Jan 12, 1998) divides the KM’s role into three critical areas;
1. To evangelize - to overcome some folks natural tendency to hoard information. Stewart mentions auditors, attorneys, and HR folks. I would add IS to this list. And instill a strong knowledge sharing ethic across the organization.
2. To oversee running and back the domains/communities of interest that find, publish and distribute knowledge across functions - act as a catalyst to precipitate knowledge creation and distribution in a sharing information environment.
3.Manage the firm-wide staff and infrastructure of websites, LOTUS Notes, databases, and other enabling technologies, balancing “competing claims of getting the most value from knowledge by putting it to widespread use” versus hoarding it.
On a specific level, the Access Facilitator or whomever, would have responsibility for creating the “place” where the domain would function. Using Library and Information Studies tools and techniques, the person in this position would identify appropriate information resources (both internal and external), analyze and grade their content, and organize the entity’s knowledge into systems and structures that facilitate productive information resource use and knowledge management. The position would have budget responsibility for content acquisition and required delivery hardware. This role would be responsible for establishing a help desk(s) where domain knowledge would be gathered, organized, processed, tagged, etc., resulting in the ability of others to avail themselves of the collected, expert knowledge of the domain. A “yellow-pages” of “who knows what” might be created; key statistics, records, data, a library of “technology enabled content’ would be produced, nurtured and made available to both internal and qualified external (customers) entities. Depending on the domain, this might be accomplished using push technology or through the pull-oriented use of webpages.
These tasks all revolve around the librarian’s basic bag of skills -
the ability to identify, access, organize, administer, and retrieve information
in all its varied forms. The tools with which we work will continue to
evolve. Endusers will still need information. Its form may change but the
function of the Library Information Professional will continue to be the
provision of information service to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page last updated: 17 July 1999