Member Resources

Sponsors

SLA WCC Past Presidents' Outlook Forum:
Is your Library Purchasing or Packing?

by Patricia Cia and Carol Williams

Members who have been active on the Chapter board continue to want to contribute to our membership. Having confidence to take charge and try something new is one of the side-benefits of being a leader. Former SLA WCC presidents Carol Williams, Debbie Millward, Barbara Holder, and Patricia Cia used their strengths to produce the inaugural Past Presidents' Outlook Forum.

While discussing trends and workplace issues with some members, Carol Williams (1998-1999) realized that we had an untapped resource and she had an excellent idea for a professional development event. Using her networking and delegation skills, Carol coordinated the speakers, topics, and our organizational meetings to plan this Forum.

Using her previous experience in speaking and coordinating presentations, Barbara Holder (1999-2000) suggested potential presenters, helped us focus the topics of the evening, and provided a very effective wrapup.

Debbie Millward (2000-2001) used her contacts to line up the prestigious Terminal City Club as our venue. She coordinated the appropriate facilities (including a "glitchless" technology), an excellent menu, and a rate that allowed us to provide members great value for their registration fee.

Patricia Cia (2001-2002) promoted the event and managed the registrations. One fun part was thinking up catchy subject lines that focused on various aspects of the evening, knowing that what might convince one person to open the e-mail, might not convince another.

Why the Topic?

The world of special librarianship is changing and it is no longer possible to describe a "typical" scenario for the new graduate. We are witnessing mergers, downsizing, shifts to virtual collections, and other changes. While the traditional library setting may be, in some industry sectors, disappearing, many organizations are recognizing and using the unique combination of technological and information retrieval skills of today's librarians. When one corporate librarian casually commented that there were "warning signals" of the impending changes for the library in her organization, our interest was piqued. What were these signals? Which of the special librarian core competencies are valued? Which services are still being used? Which services have been eliminated?

It seemed appropriate that we ask librarians who had experienced or are still in the process of change to speak to these issues and tell us how they are adapting to the new reality. Carol Saxon showed the then and now at ICBC. Tracey Carmichael described the evolving role of the librarians at the BC Securities Commission. Daphne Bruce explained the threats and opportunities for the library in the research intensive QLT environment. Lynne Foster explained the partnerships she has developed during the tumultuous times at Telus.

Thank you to...

Our presenters who took the time to think about their experiences over the past two years and share them with us:

BC Securities Commission - Tracey Carmichael
ICBC - Carol Saxon
QLT Inc. - Daphne Bruce
Telus - Lynne Foster

Even after the evening's event, our presenters reviewed and augmented their slides where possible to make them useful for members who could not attend the Vancouver event.

We also couldn't have done it without help from these current board members: Carol Saxon (Vancouver Director), Debbie Schachter (Fund Development Chair), Diane Walker (Secretary), and Darren Hamilton (Treasurer)

And of course, thank you to our sponsors who helped offset some of our costs: Andornot (special sponsor for this event) and Infomart.

This event attracted 41 attendees, with zero no-shows! Attendees included 28 members (including one who was on the fence, but just joined); 7 non members; 2 students (one SLAIS, one Librarian from Brazil who is still taking English); 4 speakers

What did we learn?

• Make sure that senior management knows what you are doing, understands your abilities, and uses and values your services.
• Develop strategic partnerships within your organization.
• Continue to learn - new technologies, content subject specific to your organization, and new information resources.
• Develop a strategic plan that is directly tied to the mission and goals of your organization.
• Eliminate those functions and tasks that are not valued.
• Emphasize your professional and research skills and provide the answers.
• Be a leader in providing strategic business solutions for your company.

Presentations:

The following presentations are in Adobe Acrobat. Some of the presentations include speaker notes.

BC Securities Commission - Tracey Carmichael
Successes, Constants, and Continuing Challenges (pdf, 262 KB)

Tracey provided some background on the BCSC and outlined changes that occurred in the Knowledge Centre over the past couple of years. Some of their successes include evaluating strengths of individuals, apportioning responsibilities and projects based on availability, interests, strengths, working in teams with those in other departments. There were also constants such as being highly valued by professional staff in important departments. And, challenges still exist ... "doing very little for decision makers at the very top - those who control budgets." (speakers notes included)

ICBC - Carol Saxon
IRC to Business Intelligence Customer Research (BICR) : a two year journey (pdf, 32 KB)

Carol discussed how the whole focus of the IRC changed over the last couple of years from the "more traditional" of providing services to a wide variety of departments to working only with one department. Her slides show at a glance the drastic changes and may show the coming trends for other special libraries. Carol would like to emphasize that "anyone in this situation should not take changes personally - overnight what may have been the very best thing to do last week can become the wrong thing to do today. Also, it is important to realize that customer surveys and client satisfaction scores often measure what people like to have, not what the executive or board deem necessary to have."

QLT Inc. - Daphne Bruce
Changes (pdf, 36 KB)

Daphne reported on her changes over the past few years that impacted her library and the services she now provides. During this time, the library cut back on some of the traditional services as it took over new roles in the company. With more staff being self-sufficient, she is doing more challenging research and the need for more marketing.

Telus - Lynne Foster
How TELUS is leveraging all corporate research capabilities to gain a competitive advantage (pdf, 133 KB)

Lynne has faced many challenges ... the first being how to serve 25,000 employees. She has had to reinvent the essential services, outsource others and make her clients self sufficient. (speakers notes included). Lynne's top six tips are:

• Anticipate (and influence) change
• Develop a collection network throughout your organization
• Exploit your strengths & explore new interests
• Collaborate with other knowledge workers
• Eliminate non-essential services & prioritize requests
• Demonstrate your value & actively market yourself

SLA WCC Chapter Presidents

© All articles are copyright by authors