PER DIVISIONHome
What's New
Officers
History
Practices
MEMBER INFORMATION
Bulletin
Business Meeting
Directory
Discussion List
Blog
Awards
Contact
Mona Suarez
CHAIR
mona.suarez@ey.com
Daran Bishop
WEBMASTER &
NETWORKING CHAIR
dlbishop@marathonoil.com
 |
|
August 1999 v.22, no.1Table of Contents:From the Chair1999 Annual Business Meeting MinutesPER Session Reports from the SLA Annual Conference 1999
Internet Corner By Ann Coppin1999 Award ReceipientsNew Officers and Committee Chairs
From the Chair - Pam WeaverThank you for expressing your confidence in me as the leader of your PER Division this year. Twenty-five years with Petroleum Abstracts, a Division of The University of Tulsa, has taught me a lot about what information professionals expect from the products they use. I hope this year to find what information professionals expect from the organization to which they belong. Over the past few years, communication among members of our Division has become a problem as we lose track of each other due to changes in employers, mergers, acquisitions, etc. Your PER Board is looking for ways to decrease the communication gap this year. One of the things to be explored in a survey you will be receiving in the Fall is to find what communication mechanisms work best for you. Watch for the survey in your mailbox and return it as soon as possible. We need your input to know in which direction to guide the Division this year. If you're reading this, I know you are visiting the PER web page. But are you also taking full advantage of the PER Discussion List as a means of communicating with your colleagues in the energy industry? If you haven't subscribed, send a message to lists@lists.sla.org with a blank subject line. In the body, type subscribe sla-dper <firstname lastname>. You will receive subscription confirmation and information on how to post messages as soon as the Networking Chair verifies your SLA membership. In a year when the energy industry is going to be challenging, at best, I hope PER can be a valuable asset to you. Please let me know if you have suggestions on anything the Division can do to benefit you. Keep reading for summaries of the PER-sponsored programs which were presented at the SLA Annual Conference in Minneapolis. Please make time to thank Libby Black who put it all together for us. Thanks, Libby! Back to Table of Contents
1999 Annual Business Meeting MinutesPETROLEUM & ENERGY RESOURCES DIVISION MINUTES The meeting was called to order by PER Chair, Libby Black. Black asked for a motion to approve the meeting agenda. Motion to approve the agenda was made by Richard Fletcher and seconded by Jennifer Reed; motion passed. The following introductions were made: 1998-99 PER Board members present were Libby Black (Chair), Pam Weaver (Chair-Elect), and Edna Paulson (Treasurer) The SLA Board Representative for the PER Business Meeting was Joan Gervino The PER Student Award Winner was Laura McLellan of Kent State University Luncheon sponsor, Questel.Orbit, was represented by Heidi Porth and Jean-Paul Chauvet. Minutes from June 1998 Annual Business Meeting were available on the luncheon tables. Black asked for a motion to approve these minutes. Motion was made by Michele Sullivan and seconded by Holly Furman; motion passed. Due to a change in Treasurer, no report was available at this meeting. The December 31, 1998, report was published in the PER Bulletin. Two committee reports were presented. Awards Committee Chair, Emily Arrowsmith, reported that Pam Weaver was the receipient of the PER Achivement Award for her work in initiating PERforum and on the PER Bylaws revisions. The Student Stipend Award went to Laura McLellan of Kent State University. Nominating Committee Chair, Edna Paulson, reported the following candidates for office during the 1999-2000 Association year: Edward W. Walton, Chair-Elect Donald Wulfinghoff, Secretary (1999-2001) Black called for a motion to approve these candidates. Motion was made by Xenia Stanford and seconded by Rosalyn Wilhelm; motion passed. Black reported the highlights of the June 6, 1999, PER Board meeting as follows:
Black again thanked sponsors of the business meeting, Questel.Orbit, and asked members to be sure to thank all the other PER sponsors as they visited the exhibit hall. Pam Weaver presented Black with a crystal mantle clock in appreciation of her service to PER as Chair. The meeting adjourned at approximately 1:00 PM. Submitted by Pam Weaver, Chair-Elect
PER Session Reports from the SLA Annual Conference, June 1999Overview - Libby Black The Petroleum & Energy Resources Division (PER) managed a full slate of programs at the Annual Conference. For early birds, PER presented our traditional three "coffee" programs, starting at 7:30 each morning. Julie Lemerond, of Exxon, presented "Word of Mouth Marketing," with twelve easy steps to talking up your information center. Mary Ellen Bates, of Bates Information Services, detailed how to compute "Fee-Based Services in the Corporate Environment." Her web page is at http://www.batesinfo.com. By Wednesday, people were still willing to get up and hear about "Competitive Intelligence for Petroleum & Energy Libraries." Tina Byrne, of Dow Jones Interactive, combined the latest push technology with the principles of competitive intelligence. There was much talk of Knowledge Management at the conference and PER contributed to the conversation with Richard Fletcher of Energy Futures speaking on "Knowledge Management: An Oxymoron?" Richard gave a detailed history of the rise of Knowledge Management and how it is being used (or abused) in today's energy industry. Chris Dobson and Carolyn Ernst of F1 Services, Inc. held a Wednesday crowd's full attention with a real time demonstration of "Staying on Track - Conducting Information Audits." We watched and participated in a survey, focus group, and interview, all in just over an hour! F1 can be reached at http://www.netcom.com/~f1srvcs "Merger Mania," co-sponsored with the Engineering Division showed us how three libraries coped with corporate change. We honored two SLA members this year: Pam Weaver of the University of Tulsa-Petroleum Abstracts won the division's Achievement Award for being the energy behind our first electronic mail list., PER Forum. Laura McLellan of Kent State was feted as our Student Stipend Award Winner. Along with two board meetings, PER held an Annual Business Meeting, hosted a beautiful Wine & Cheese Party at Windows on Minnesota, and co-sponsored the field trip to 3M.
Corporate Intelligence for Petroleum and Energy Libraries - Presented by Tina Byrnes, Dow Jones Reported by Connie BihonTina pointed out that Dow Jones interactive web tools bring employees back to your internet site by integrating relevant external content into their work environment. She said that this achievement will enable your customers to keep abreast of competition, merger activity, and industry trends. She remarked that by taking the lead in providing external news on your intranet, you will increase the library's visibility and its value to the corporation. Tina described how new Dow Jones products perform in the intranet environment and how they allow the librarian to interact with them to enhance their utilization. She stressed that Dow Jones web tools enable the librarian to offer timely, filtered, customized content that is integrated and searchable on the intranet. All this is achieved with their server software, which provides for predefined searches and web pages built with a Java application that organizes content into folders. The librarian can create folders, move content among folders, add hot buttons, add comments, add urls and change fonts and colors. Targeted searching is possible because the information provided by Dow Jones is indexed by company, industry and source. A very important aspect of this server software is its ability to show usage and trends by folder and even by individual news story. A new server software, which requires some local programming, will return search results as a dataset that you can reconstruct into a format totally reflecting the look and feel of your intranet. Through blending with your internal information, Dow Jones becomes an integral part of your site. Back to Table of Contents
Merger Mania - Where Libraries Are AssetsReported by Cheryl McNeilI had the pleasure of hearing first hand the experiences that three different librarians faced when their companies either acquired, sold off a portion of their assets or merged with another company or companies. It was interesting to hear three very unique perspectives from three entirely different companies. Katherine Romano of Lucent Technologies (formerly the equipment manufacturing arm of AT & T) presented her scenario and experiences first. Lucent has gone through incredible growth and change in the last three years and judging from Katherine's remarks this change will likely continue. The company has acquired nineteen different companies since 1997 and Katherine illustrated the acquisition of Octel. In September 1997 the acquisition of Octel was finalized and then in October 1997 an introductory, welcoming email was sent to the Octel employees. After this initial email, small focus group sessions were organized and held at the Octel offices. The feedback from these focus group meetings was generally very good and efforts were made to tailor products for this new group of employees. All of Lucent's changes have not been with acquisitions of other companies. In October 1997 General Dynamics purchased Lucent's Advanced Technology Systems unit. This deal was complicated with the legal battle over proprietary information. Katherine indicated there are several complicating matters when there are acquisitions and divestitures. One particularly challenging aspect is ensuring that vendor contracts are in compliance, i.e. ensuring that prospective, "new" employees are not given access to various information products until they are truly part of the firm. Another downside is that the budget cannot be increased (in that fiscal year), although there is a tremendous growth in the number of employees that would be accessing the various information products. Katherine left me with the impression that she and the rest of the library staff have their information centres/libraries under excellent leadership and likely have learned from each acquisition a little better, how to handle the next one. She indicated it is important for all of the library staff to become "information advocates" - to be partners, make contacts, and take proactive rather than reactive roles in all aspects of library operation. Next, I heard from Ferol Foos of Albemarle Corporation, formerly Ethyl. Ferol described her experiences of a "split" where a large portion of her companies assets were sold. She indicated that the company was once on the Fortune 500 list but after the sale the company dropped off the Fortune 500 list altogether. Ferol sprinkled her presentation with many words of wisdom which I will include here - through it all: "be positive", "plan for everything", "what resources you have - you can often keep", "switch your loyalties", "add value", and finally, "negotiate, be flexible". Ferol indicated that her company went through two splits and they did okay on the second split so that now they are ahead of where they once were. She mentioned that they had respect and support from management and it is important to get that. One strategy that seemed to work for Ferol was that she organized a team of key clients and they decided on the resources that could go and the ones that should stay. She mentioned that it was worthwhile to write a letter to both CEOs to have them realize the issues that pertain to the library or information center. Although, the library was a low priority she indicated that it was important to keep management informed throughout the process. Her advice - "do not let this slide!!". Ferol pointed out that there were several problems including, low employee morale, a slowdown in work, communications becomes complicated, and difficulties were encountered with understanding the expectations of the different attorneys. Some useful tidbits of advice for anyone in a special library include: "know the facts about your library, for example, the linear feet of shelf space" and "when signing a flat fee agreement, never go for a period of more than one year". To sum up, Ferol shared some goodwill and clearly she indicated that through all her experience a positive attitude really helps!. For example, "make changes into opportunities", "believe something good will come out of the change, as it often does". The last speaker of the afternoon session was Corinne Campbell of Boeing Company and clearly her company has undergone a great magnitude of change with the major acquisition of McDonnell Douglas in 1997. With this acquisition the company more than doubled in size. To illustrate this, Corinne shared some very interesting numbers. Year end 1995, Boeing had 96,000 employees, 73% of which were located in Seattle, Washington. By year end 1997, Boeing had grown to 238,000 employees with employees located in several different offices/plants. In 1995 there were 5 Boeing Company libraries and by year end 1997 there were 23 libraries. Corinne spoke of a great deal of cooperation and sharing with the various Boeing Company libraries throughout the United States. In this collaborative team environment important aspects of library operations are covered, including: acquisitions, automation, intralibrary and interlibrary loan, reference/research practices, serials subscriptions (with the goal to balance collections), site licenses and finally Web maintenance and development. The "library integration teams" have two face-to-face meetings each year and bi-weekly teleconference or video conference meetings. Face-to-face meetings are used when developing mission statements. Corinne has observed some challenges throughout Boeing's explosive growth and indicated that working "company wide" is much more difficult. Some of her greatest frustrations are bureaucracy, slowness in decision making and endless discussion. She believes that through it all the Boeing Company libraries will succeed with a strong belief in cooperation and sharing. Finally, Corinne reminded us that "change is the law of life". Back to Table of Contents
Word-of-Mouth MarketingReported by Shannon Grimes-BuchartKicking off the first Petroleum and Energy Resources Division breakfast session at the 90th Annual SLA Conference was an interesting presentation by Julie Lemerond who is with the Information Center at the Exxon Production Research Company in Houston, Texas. Julie provided practical advice on "Word-of-Mouth Marketing" following Jerry R. Wilsons, 12 marketing rules as found in his book, "Word-of-Mouth Marketing" (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1991. ISBN: 0-471-52495-6). The 12 rules summarized for us by Julie are: Rule 1: You must have a good product or service to use word-of-mouth marketing strategies -- otherwise, you'll just be spreading bad news. Julie pointed out that you need to deal with your negatives and address who doesn't come to your library or use your services. Rule 2: This is the rule of 3-33. For Every three people willing to tell a positive story about an experience with your company (library), there are thirty-three who will tell a horror story. You need to keep in mind what your customers are saying about you. You also need to try to generate positive talk about your library. Rule 3: The power of insider talk. Listen to your insider talk! There are three general types of inside communications: formal, informal or the grapevine and talk between co-workers. Julie suggested that one way to start positive talk about your library is to ensure that your staff talk positively about their work environment, the company they work for and what they do. Rule 4: Identify and cultivate your champions, those big hitter who will spread the word for you. Julie talked about the different levels of the marketing pyramid. The pyramid starts with your "suspects" at the bottom, followed by "prospects", then your "customers", next are your "clients" and finally your "champions". The goal is to turn your suspects into champions. Also keep in mind that those who are already your champions can be one of your best allies in gaining and keeping support for your library. To turn suspects into champions, the following rules come into play: Rule 5: Word-of-Mouth marketing ultimately depends on the quality of your customer service. In other words, a critical talk factor is service! You need to keep the service promises that you make. A written customer services policy, on display in your centre, was suggested by Julie. Rule 6: Word-of Mouth marketing cuts across every organizational and operational division in a company. Keeping this in mind, you need to stop the horror talk and defuse angry customers. Julie provided a number of tips such as acknowledging that a customer is upset and ask your customer what will make them happy. You might do something extra for that unhappy customer and talking with them in positive tones can help to turn negatives into positives. Rule 7: The difference between just operating a business, and operating with no hassle in order to generate positive word-of-mouth can be summed up in a word --- attitude. It is best to keep hassles to a minimum. You need to change those things that are barriers to doing business with your customers so they perceive your group as easy to do business with. Rule 8: Blow your customers away by exceeding their every expectation. Often no one will talk about good service! You need to consistently do the little things well, you should never make your customers feel stupid and it is often a good idea to call your customers back to see how things are. Rule 9: Bellow or beg, if you must, but at all costs, let your customers, clients, and champions know you want their complaints. Julie indicated that it is important to let your customers know how and where they can complain to. She suggested that you put complaint information on all library "packaging" and e-mail customers with this information when possible. Rule 10: Catch your employees generating positive word-of-mouth and reward them for it. This related to Rule 3. If your staff talk and spread positive messages about your group, rewarding them for this encourages more positive talk and is a great motivator. Rule 11: For a Word-of-Mouth marketing plan to work, an organization's leaders must commit to active, proven practices for getting things done. You need to embrace what gets measured, applauded or rewarded as those are the things that are recognized or will be done. This can be a tough one in some organizations. You need to identify boss behavior that converts word-of-mouth marketing strategies into action. Rule 12: Keep your Word-of-Mouth marketing campaign plan simple but systematic -- in short, streamline everything and orient everything into action! Julie suggested the smart principle for doing this: S- specific, M- measurable, A- attainable, R- relevant and T- time bound. Your plan needs to consider the marketing pyramid of moving your suspects up to champions. Also remember to ask your customers what they need/want and a bit of controlled outrageousness can generate fresh marketing ideas. Julie left us with one bonus rule -- Positive Word-of-Mouth is generated, built, and sustained, not on a single gigantic activity, but on a thousand little things done well, day in and day out. Back to Table of Contents
Fee Based Information Services - Presented by Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Information ServicesReported by Pam Weaver"The early bird gets the worm" was certainly applicable to this early-morning session. Mary Ellen Bates provided a lot of good, thought-provoking information on fee-based information services. Topics discussed included why to charge, how to charge, the issues involved, when not to charge, staffing issues, marketing, practical considerations, and a checklist for opening day. Mary Ellen's presentation is available at her website: http://www.BatesInfo.com.
Staying on Track: Conducting Information Audits - Presented by Chris Dobson and Carolyn Ernst, F1 Services, Inc.Reported by Pam WeaverChris Dobson and Carolyn Ernst held the crowd's full attention with a real time demonstration of conducting an information audit. The discussed the three audit techniques -- personal interviews, focus groups, and surveys -- and demonstrated how each could be used to gain information on a product or service. The topic for the audit was the registration process at the SLA Conference. In conducting a personal interview, it is important to develop interview questions in advance. During the interview, it is important to listen, clarify all terminology, establish goals, and probe the subject in depth. The focus group should be characterized by subjective, informal, in-depth probing of the topic in a small group of no more than 6 to 10 people. The final part of the audit, the survey, was described as the media from which hard data evolves. The survey should be kept as short as possible, with simple questions, using words not numbers, and with no ranking questions. In order to get the respondent to complete and return the survey, a small reward should be available. The final report should be tailored to your audience. A written report, including graphs, is useful, but an oral report is usually better to allow you to interact with management during the presentation. Further information on conducting information audits can be found at the F1 Services website: http://www.netcom.com/~f1srvs. Back to Table of Contents
Other session highlightsReported by Connie BihonKEYNOTE SPEAKER - MONDAY - JULY 7TH - LAURENCE PRUSAK,
MANAGING PRINCIPLE-IBM CONSULTING GROUP AND EXECUTIVE
DIRECTORY OF THE INSTITUE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: OTHER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SESSIONS: TUESDAY, JUNE 8TH - INTRODUCTION TO TECH TOOLS FOR
PROFESSIONALS ENTERING THE KM PRACTICE RETURN ON INVESTMENT PHYSICS AND MATH RESOURCES SIAM - SOCIETY OF INDUSTRIAL AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS - This is also a membership site; it has 11 online journals and will begin selling individual articles in 2000. (DOE has links to articles now through its Energy Bridge.) AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY - This site contains all of AAS journals online in electronic format. They find that online journals are published so much faster than print journals that it is the online version which is becoming the definitive content and the print edition is only a subset. Already their members prefer the online version of the journals for their search and browsing capabilities. (Both these phenomena are true for online journals in general and not just the ones from these scholarly societies.!) EUROPEAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY (EMIS) - Their site is
www.emis.org and at that site, members can find the
electronic library of mathematics with 36 titles. EMIS
also produces the MATHEMATICS DATABASE (1931-CURRENT);
it is sold in print, cd, web and through online database
vendors (particularly STN). There is LIMITED free access
to the database-the user gets only 3 citations found
in a search and more requires a subscription. They use
a mathematical search engine - EULER - which concentrates
on quality. EMIS also offers free access to MPRESS -
Mathematics Preprint Search Service. It searches preprint
collections on the web. TWO SESSION ON STANDARDS: WEDNESDAY, JULY 9TH Back to Table of Contents
Internet Corner - A PotpourriBy Ann CoppinUCITAThe National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws at their annual conference passed the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?990729.ecucita.htm The draft law now goes to various state legislatures for approval. States typically approve the laws recommended by the NCCUSL. The goal of a Uniform Law is to help provide a consistent framework of state laws. UCITA used to be referred to as "Article 2B" or UCC 2B." Both as an information professional and as consumers we need to be aware of the progress of this draft law. It is a move toward licensing of information in many forms and away from the sale of copies as understood under copyright law. Infoworld provides a summary of consumer concerns available at: http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/features/990531ucita3.htm The American Library Association's Washington Office provides information about it at: http://www.ala.org/washoff/look.html This article includes links to other sites discussing the issues such as: http://sims.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/acm_2B.html
Information about the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws can be found at: http://www.nccusl.org/ Book DevicesElectronic books are accessible through the Internet. There are the free files of books either in the public domain or designed to be free, and the there are the electronic books to be purchased and downloaded to a handheld book device. Lawrence J. Magid recently provided a review of his experience with testing the Rocket eBook and the Softbook. http://www.larrysworld.com/articles/ebook.htm
Rather than dismiss book devices as an interesting
"adult toy," another approach to consider how they can
be used for other purposes. For example, Karen Kaplan
reported in the Los Angeles Times (Book Device Getting
New Life as Script Tool?; Monday, July 12, 1999) about
how the Rocket eBook was replacing paper scripts. http://www.ebooknet.com/ Maps and Driving DirectionsThere are now a variety of sites offering maps of locations and driving directions to United States locations. A common need for mapping addresses is a street address rather than a name of a building. http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py http://mapblast.com http://www.mapquest.com/ http://travel.epicurious.com/ http://www.expediamaps.com/ Sites of Interesthttp://www.larrysworld.com/ http://www.bookmarksplus.com/ http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/ http://cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/wxnet/ www.tscentral.com http://w3.one.net/~rback http://factfinder.census.gov/java_prod/dads.ui.homePage.HomePage
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/ http://www.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/Year2000/
http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/index.shtml
http://www.afscme.org/health/safetc.htm http://www.osha.gov/ http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/ http://www.eeoc.gov/ http://talentmarket.monster.com/ Back to Table of Contents
1999 Award RecipientsThe 1999 Special Achievement Award went to Pamela J. Weaver. Pam was primarily nominated for her work as moderator of the PER Forum from 1994-1998. The Forum is now automated via the SLA web site, but prior to that Pam single-handedly kept us all connected. Pam also rewrote the PER Division bylaws. She is now the PER Division Chair and was invaluable in her previous position as Chair-Elect. Pam is the Assistant Director of Administration and Training at the University of Tulsa. The 1999 Student Stipend Award went to Laura A. McLellan. Laura's winning essay, entitled "Why I Want to Attend the SLA Annual Conference as a PER Guest," was one of eight entries. Laura received $500.00 towards conference expenses, tickets to all PER Division ticketed events and a Tea given in her honor. Laura is currently pursuing her degree in Library and Information Science at Kent Sate University. Congratulations to both Pam and Laura and thanks to Jennifer Reed, Information Resources Supervisor at ARCO in Plano, TX, who served on the Awards committee. Emily Arrowsmith, Awards Chair Back to Table of Contents
New Officers and Committee ChairsPETROLEUM AND ENERGY RESOURCES DIVISION Chair Chair-Elect Secretary Treasurer Past Chair PETROLEUM AND ENERGY RESOURCES DIVISION Networking/Bulletin Editor Membership Nominating Awards Financial Development Back to Table of Contents
Send comments, corrections, and submissions to
PER Bulletin editor
|
