Being a “Really Useful” Embedded Library

My kids watch a lot of Thomas & Friends.  For those of you not familiar with it, it’s a children’s show that features talking steam engines trying to be good and useful people… er, anthropomorphic trains.   The trains are always trying to be “really useful engines” (i.e. taking on important jobs that make them feel good and demonstrating that to the owner of the train yard). 

A new initiative kicked off at the company I work for and pretty heavily involves the department I support.  A lot of our people have been drawn off normal assignments to participate.  I wasn’t chosen.  And while it’s an ego blow, I really don’t have the skills the project needs and that’s ok.  Still… I’m not feeling like a “really useful engine.”  As an embedded librarian, my work often doesn’t engage in the day to day work necessary to complete projects like this.  However, I’m wondering what will happen with my job since it’s not critical to this initiative. Because if you’re not a “really useful engine” in Corporate America, your job is in danger. 

So I’ve been thinking about ways to manipulate the situation participate using the skills that I’m good at.  I think there might still be a place for what I do because:

I inform what the teams completing the work are trying to do, not what they are doing. 

Let me explain. 

I don’t (and probably will never) affect the daily work of teams I support.   It’s highly technical and it’s not my role.  However, hopefully what my work does is steer their thoughts and strategy about the final shape that daily work builds up to.  The work I do guides the form of the final product.

Or at least that’s what’s I keep telling myself to make myself feel like a “really useful embedded librarian…” 

Packaging Research

Sometimes you arrive late to the party.  I had another minor epiphany this week that I should have had years ago.

I’ve been struggling with how to do more forward looking research.  Ideally, my work is supposed to be balanced between reactive requests for information and proactive prognosticating on the future of technology.  The majority of my time, however, is spent being reactive.  It’s actually kind of difficult to do the forward looking work.  By the time I clear out time to research and write a white paper, I often have another three requests which pull me mentally away from thinking about the future.  The distraction creates inefficiency because by the time I’m able to return to the white paper, I have to mentally review the nuances of the topic that I was going to write about. 

The solution, which I should have thought of long before now, is a blog.  Blogs are of lengths that are reasonably fast to produce while still infusing commentary and insight.  And in many cases, the topics I’d like to cover may not lend themselves to the length and rigor reserved for a white paper.   I’m not sure why I haven’t thought about it before now (especially since I do quite a bit of research on social media).  A new colleague in a similar position in another area of the company actually pointed out the solution to me.  Packaging up my intellectual epiphanies and information discoveries in small chunks makes perfect sense for the future oriented work I should be doing.