Setting Up a New Practice

The area I jumped into is only about six months old, and as I’ve mentioned before isn’t staffed by people with a professional background in search or research (save one).  Additionally my team was established to do a particular task, but the focus has now changed.  This means we’re kind of setting up a new practice from scratch. 

This situation has its ups and downs…  The downside is we don’t necessarily have a lot of direction.  We don’t (or didn’t – we’re better now) know what information people want, how they want to consume/integrate it, and in some cases what sources to consult.  This also means we don’t have any idea if we’re doing our work “right.” And while I’m used to working this way (as I think many librarians are) I find the lack of boundaries a bit uncomfortable.

The upside is we don’t have lot of baggage.  We can define the services and offerings (within reason) however we want, without needing to worry about a lot of the political issues that come from having to convince the “old guard” on staff of new ways of doing things.  This has made the position a lot of fun because I came from a position where the “old guard” had a certain way of doing things, whether it was the best way or not. 

Some of the functions my new partner and I have had to establish over the last two months have been… 

• Defining the services we would provide.
• Defining the audience for our services. 
• Defining the sources we would use or need to procure for the work we were doing.
• Training each other in sources the other doesn’t know about.
• Figuring out where each other’s strengths lie and how to split out the work.
• Defining what the marketing and outreach message would be.
• Branding for the marketing and outreach efforts.  (We’re still working on this one.)
• Branding for research results.  (We’re still working on this one too.)
• Setting expectations with clients about what we can and can’t provide.  (We’re struggling with this.)
• Setting expectations on turnaround times. (I think this is going to be an ongoing issue… more on this later.)
• Defining measures of success.  (How do we know we’re getting the right information to the right people at the right time?)

Of course, the list above makes it sound like there was a lot more structure to the process than there was.  To some extent, we’re kind of making it up as we go and as needs arise.  Probably not the best way to go about establishing a new practice, but…