Librarians as Connectors

A colleague and I recently established a regular roundtable meeting between several different groups all working towards the same goal, but who were not connecting with each other.

This got me thinking…  One aspect of librarianship (embedded or otherwise) that is often taken for granted the librarian as connector. 

In large corporations, it’s not uncommon for multiple groups from different parts of the company to be working towards the same goal or on the same topic without knowing of each other. 

Because we assist a wide variety of people in finding information about a wide variety of topics, we get to view what a lot of different groups are working on.  And because of our familiarity with the groups and the subject matter, librarians are in in a position to see the connections between them and introduce them to one another. 

This can sometimes be better than if they find out about each other’s work through other channels.  For while corporations have a habit of having simultaneous groups unknowingly working topics in tandem, there is also the tendency to get into territorial pissing matches around those topics once the groups discover each other.  It can degenerate into a more civilized version of gang warfare.  But librarians can step in as a neutral third party to help gently introduce each group to one another and point out synergies.  

This helps The Corporation in a couple of ways. 

• It makes connections between groups that might not already exist and therefore leverage a larger force of people and skills toward the common goal. 
• It can help eliminate duplicate work efforts.
• It can assist in leveraging the skills of individual group members that might be absent from their adjacent teams. 

Back to the roundtable example…  The Corporation I work for has several groups looking at emerging technology from very different angles.  It makes sense for each of the groups to exist in their own silos. While chatting with a member of the other group we came to the conclusion that while we do a great job of keeping our respective clients informed about technology, we don’t network with one another very often.  There were probably things each group was seeing the others could benefit from.  Or, there was information that one group was finding which wasn’t relevant to them, but would be highly relevant to one of the other groups if they only knew the other group was interested in it. 

So now we gather every two weeks to discuss items we’re seeing and have a fairly lively email network to share items between one another.  (I suppose knowledge management folks would call this a “community of practice.”)  Additionally, we’ve come to find that individual members have specialized skill sets that others in the group were looking for, but didn’t know where to find.  Even if the roundtable doesn’t last, the members now know about each other and can feel comfortable reaching out to one another for assistance in specific circumstances.

What do you think?  What other ways can librarians act as connectors within large groups?