"Value Added Service"

Oh how I hate the term “value added service…” 

It’s an expression bandied around in Corporate America to talk about what you should be doing above and beyond the work that you do because apparently, that isn’t enough.  As a specialist, I’ve always thought the work one was hired to do was inherently “added value.”  (My smartass answer has always been: Try doing your own damn searching and see what you find compared to I find and you’ll see the value I add.)

A colleague of mine (we’ll call him The Mercenary Philosopher) and I were discussing a recent initiative this week and I was telling him I wasn’t sure where I could contribute.  I was struggling to find my role in the initiative because, as a researcher, I don’t make the widgets, I help make the widgets better. And that’s a precarious position to be in in modern Corporate America, especially when you have a position that appears on the surface as if anyone can do it.  If you’re not showing your direct value, you’re in danger of being cut. 

The Mercenary Philosopher then said something triggered a minor epiphany.  He said that while knowledge of resources and how to manipulate them gives me an edge, no one thinks about that part of my job.  To provide the “added value,” he said that I need to be part of the decision making process, and that means giving insights and recommendations on the content I find. 

Of course, I’ve been hearing about the profession taking this track since grad school.  I’ve sat through entire conference sessions on it.  But I’ve been very resistant to it.  I’ve prided myself on not providing insight or commentary and only providing the raw information for others to make the decisions.  My guiding philosophy when I managed the library was to act as an intellectual Switzerland where people could get information to make decisions for themselves.  Looking back, that may have been a mistake.  Or at the very least, it was a model more fit for public and academic settings. 

While finding and delivering information is important, for librarians to survive in embedded environments (and maybe everywhere else), they’re going to need to provide the “value add” of insight and involve themselves (subtly) in decision making.  This might be as formal as a white paper, or a simple as pointing out patterns you see in the literature.  Either way, it’s about providing an educated opinion on the content that only a librarian could retrieve. 

Of course, this got me thinking back to whether or not I’m just a glorified “analyst” like the other 20,000 “analysts” in my company.  And I suppose I am.  But the combination of the search skills and the ability to synthesize and hypothesize is perhaps what makes embedded librarians the most bad ass best analysts.