What would you say ya do here?

Bob Slydell: What would you say ya do here?

Tom Smykowski: Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

Describing an embedded librarian’s work to someone outside the profession is one of the most difficult aspects of my work because the tasks and results of the information profession are largely intangible. 

Recently my area was assigned a “team lead.”  For those of you who aren’t familiar with this role, it’s a position that deals with the day-to-day operations of a small team to free the manager up to do “manager stuff.”  In other words: it’s all of the responsibilities of management and none of the authority (and no pay increase). 

My team is made up of individuals who are all generally involved in the same topics and goal (research and innovation), but do so in very different ways with different responsibilities.  So my new team lead scheduled meetings with each individual to talk about what they do.  She kind of already knows what we do, but wants to get a more specific idea of how our jobs function, who we serve, what roadblocks we might have, etc.  For example, she knows I do “research” but doesn’t exactly know what “research” entails. 

I think it’s great that she’s doing this. “Research” in most people’s mind involves going out to Google, searching through the first page of hits and then moving on whether you find what you need or not. 

That’s not what I do.  

Because it’s so rare that I actually have an opportunity to help someone understand my profession, how I do it, and why it’s important I’m trying to carefully construct a discussion outline.  I think my previous inability to converse around this topic is what may have led to the demise of my library, so it’s very important to me to communicate all this correctly.  As they say, you only get one shot at a first impression…

Here’s an outline of what I came up with. These aren’t intended to be presented as a formal presentation so much as they are talking points to hit on or inject at the most appropriate time.   

• A 30 second elevator pitch/tagline of what I do. 
• A 30 second overview of why I’m better at research (because of my library background) than 90% of the rest of the world (i.e. I know more sources and can search them more efficiently saving my clients time and money). 
• The teams I support (i.e. the subject areas I cover). 
• The research products I produce (proactive white papers, reactive requests for information, passive research), the purpose of those products, the audience they target, and the impact they’ve had.  I even went so far as to bring examples of tangible documents I’ve delivered. 
• The tasks I engage in (research, presentation, instruction, documents delivery, etc.) 
• Other duties as assigned and how those help me do my main duties. 

Am I missing anything? What else would you talk about?