Gaining Weight

At heart, I’m a scholar.  I like reading and learning new things, but not necessarily for any practical reason.  And I love the challenge of being able to uncover a piece of information that someone needs.  I don’t really care what they need it for, only that it’s hard to find. 

In my old department and in the traditional library setting I got to investigate interesting topics ranging from business to technology to law to medicine.  I passed off the results of my investigations to let someone else make the decisions based on the information I found. 

Things are different in the new area I work in.  The topics are more focused, but they’re also topics I’m really interested in. But the biggest difference and the one that’s causing me the most angst is:

I’m being asked to analyze the material I find and draft recommendations/decisions on it.

In addition to the finder of material, now I’m also an analyst of the material.  Librarians in special libraries have been headed this direction at least since I entered the profession around ten years ago.  But adding interpreter to finder in my skill set raises some uncomfortable questions.  What if I recommend the wrong technology?  What if I misinterpret a trend or miss a crucial piece of data?  What if a path of action I suggest leads the company in the wrong path and costs us a lot of money?

In the end, the best anyone can do (librarian or not) is be thorough and make the best decision you can with the best data you have available.  That said I’m finding out being an “embedded librarian” carries with it a bit more weight and responsibility than my previous traditional role. 

What do you think about this?  Is there more responsibility when you are asked to analyze material? Or am I simply being overly dramatic? 

Human Powered Search

Jason Calacanis seems to have a special place in his heart for librarians.  Or at least he should because the type of tech businesses he starts.

Among other things Calacanis is a venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur.  I’ve been keeping a loose eye on him since he launched Maholo.  Maholo is interesting because it functions as a cross between online answer platforms (like Yahoo! Answers) and a search engine, but also incorporates human curated content.  Essentially it packages results on a topic from a variety of places into a single, authoritative source.  Sounds rather like reference services to me. 

The Mercenary Philosopher pointed me to his latest startup this week, a project called Launch.  Librarians, particularly special librarians, will recognize this as the alert services we’ve provided to our clients for decades.   

Surrounding both projects is the concept of “human-powered search” results, which I think is particularly intriguing.  I’ve struggled over the last ten years with both friends and The Company to justify why I became a librarian.  Their approach is that the search engine can power any kind of knowledge discovery needed.  Calacanis, however, seems to understand that machines and human working together can produce information discovery that neither could alone. 

I wonder if he’s hiring…

Career Day & Stereotypes

The kids had career day at their preschool last week.  One of the boys decided he wanted to be a librarian like daddy.  (To which I almost said: “No, son.  Do not follow in daddy’s hippy idealistic footsteps.  Go be a scientist or a doctor or something that’s valued by society and makes money.”)   So mommy dressed him as the stereotype: big glasses and a backpack full of books.  And of course he was told the standard role of the librarian was someone who helps other people find books. 

After mommy was done I tried to… uh, “update” the description of a librarian to the twenty-first century.  The boy listened politely as I stumbled with how to explain exactly what I do.  I don’t work in a physical library and I don’t really use books much anymore when it comes to research.  But he doesn’t get “research” anyway.  Nor does he get what it means to help people find “information” (regardless of format) or why that’s important.   

All week I’ve been struggling with how to describe what I do to my kids. 

At this point you’re probably saying: “He’s four.  What the hell does it matter?! Give him the basic concept and move on.”  So I’ve also been struggling with why I care.  And I suppose it comes back to showing value because I love what I do.  Organizing books isn’t valuable to society and it’s not what I do.  (Or at least it’s only a very, very small part.)  No, I don’t need to prove my worth to my son, but I want him to have an appreciation and respect for what I do and love. 

So I decided to make it kind of sexy and say: “A librarian is kind of like a detective.  He helps other people by finding things for them whether that’s books or artifacts or words that help them be better people.” 

My four year old nodded politely and then asked “Daddy, what’s a detective?”  *facepalm*

How Much is Your Job Worth?

How Much is Your Job Worth? by Jerry McLaughlin

McLaughlin poses two questions every mercenary should asking themselves...

1. What is the importance to the employer of doing the task you fulfill?
2. How desired/specialized is the skill set you bring to the task?

Embedded librarians have a lock on the second aspect.  We bring a fairly specific skill set information retrieval, dissemination, and organization.  

The first question is a bit more problematic.  My grizzled perspective has lead me to believe that My Masters don't always place a high value on the need I fill for them.  So when I'm feeling really cocky I'll ask, what happens if you don't have someone like me doing what I do?  Can you afford to miss something that I'll uncover for you? 

Your Strength Isn’t Searching

One of the skills I use to differentiate myself for my fellow Corporate Drones is the ability to retrieve relevant information, quickly, and from specialized sources (i.e. anywhere but Google).  In other words: Searching.  Everyone can search Google for movie times and the latest news about Google or the next generation iPad rumors. 

So when my friend The Mercenary Philosopher said in conversation that my strength wasn’t in searching I bristled. 

We were discussing a stable of interns we keep on hand for ad hoc research requests.  Interns often give mixed results when it comes to research.  Some are great.  Some are terrible.  But when he stated that the interns could find information just as well as I could, I started looking nonchalantly for the nearest object I could find to use as a shank. 

I struggled to find anything immediately, which gave my friend the chance to explain.  He went on to say that while librarians are adept at find information, their strength really lies in connecting the information together and to people who can best use it. 

As I reflected on the idea for the rest of the evening, I came to realize there was some wisdom in The Mercenary Philosopher’s words, particularly for special librarians and even more so for embedded librarians.  These two classes of information workers (anecdotally) tend to work with the same people on a regular basis.  Knowing what information is relevant in the context the organization operates in as well as whom in the organization might be able to best use that information is incredibly powerful. 

Creatively Avoiding the Post Conference Trip Report

Going to conferences is one of the few perks I get as a Corporate Drone.  A lot of folks think I sit by the pool with cigars and scotch.  While conferences are far from “relaxing” as a lot of folks assume, I always find them refreshing and intellectually stimulating. 

Conference attendees get so much information, however, it’s very difficult to transmit in a way that’s meaningful to people who can use that information on returning.  Sure I took notes during sessions, but no who the hell wants to read those?  And no one wants to read the trip report either.  Nor do I wish to write it since in all likelihood it won’t be read.

So as I was trying to avoid the work of writing the trip report upon returning from the Consumer Electronics Show in January, I happened on the idea of doing a roundtable discussion for my department and special guests.  No slides, no formal presentation, just a moderated panel of a few of the other Drones who also attended CES.  It turned out to be an easy way for the attendees to spread their knowledge, and, more importantly, an easy way for the audience to absorb it.  Additionally, it helped people in the audience make connections with the speakers and further relationships. 

       

Since it worked for CES, I tried it again when a group from The Company returned from South by Southwest.  I wouldn’t say either event was successful from the perspective of attendance.  Each session had maybe 20-30 people.  (Around 120 were invited.)   But participant and audience engagement and enthusiasm was high.  So I’m counting it as a win. 

I think coordinating events like this is often overlooked as a form of sharing information.  But it seems to me that there is an opportunity here for librarians to stand out.  There are a lot of benefits to this oral information sharing…

1. Sharing the information orally is a low burden activity for everyone involved. No one has to prepare a formal presentation and the audience doesn’t have to suffer through PowerPoint.
2. The session spreads the information a few people have in their head farther into the organization and helps justify the expense of attending the conference.  
3. The experts who attended the conference are connected to people attending the debrief who may not know them thereby enhancing business relationships.  
4. The experts who attended get a chance to interact with each other.  I received numerous “thank yous” from roundtable participants who hadn’t had a chance to connect and share ideas with one another since returning. 
5. The Mercenary Part: It gives you face time in front of an audience (as the host) and you get marks for “collaboration” (again at very little effort on your part). 
6.  Another Mercenary Aspect: Even if you didn’t go to the conference itself, offering to coordinate a debriefing session makes you look like a hero by taking the burden off the returning participants to do so. 

Information Literacy for Newspaper Librarians

Wired ran a great podcast on their fact checking desk. Great lesson in information literacy for journalists. 

Creating Future Knowledge

Are librarians choosing to disappear from the information & knowledge delivery process?  By Carl Grant

Like it or not, how we define ourselves (or allow others to define us) reflects our value, especially in the world of business and special libraries. 

As a mercenary librarian, your value reflects 1) How much money you’ll make and 2) How long The Company will employ you.  So I’m always searching for new ways to show what I do is important and explain the service I provide.  For a long time, I’ve said that I help people find and organize information.  The problem is everyone thinks they can find good information efficiently just using Google.  Everyone thinks they can do secondary research.  And to an extent, yes everyone can.  So the tag line I was using at the beginning of my career ten years ago is needing an update. 

I really enjoyed Carl Grant’s article, particularly for how it defines what it is that librarians do, no matter the setting:

We help people create new knowledge by helping them find existing knowledge that is authoritative, authenticated and appropriate to their needs. We put that knowledge in context and provide it without bias.  This becomes the foundation upon which they create new knowledge.
 

While I detest the term “added value,” it’s important to show to one’s Masters.  Grant’s emphasis on helping other create new knowledge is a really great way to show that added value, especially when your name may not be the one going the final product. 

Commentary: Not a Librarian?

Not a Librarian? by Nicole Fosh

I really liked Nicole’s musings here and I think they’re representative of what a lot of us in the profession are going through these days.  (Or at least they are still issues that I struggle with.)  She has a very mercenary practical philosophy about the type of work librarians engage in, but struggles with what to call herself, whether or not the MLS is worth the time and expense, and seems to have a bit of guilt for not working in the traditional library space.

She epitomizes the mercenary philosophy that I think will save our profession with the following:

It may not have been in the city I hoped (I had thought I’d leave Boston as soon as I finished my degree).  It may not have been in the industry I hoped.  But it was a job.  A job that was in a great city, paid well, and most importantly, a job where my degree was a requirement. It seemed like a no-brainer to not take it.

While I think Nicole feels the same pain/guilt/betrayal/whatever as I do for not working in a more traditional setting, sometimes it’s the right choice.  We librarians have a mindset of martyrdom which does us little good.  There is no reason we should work long hours for poor pay if there are better options. 

I still ask myself the same questions that Nicole does and struggle with the same issues after a year of being out of a traditional setting.  Sometimes I’m comforted by a quote from Joseph Campbell (probably borrowing from Einstein):  “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” 

Creating the Library of Tomorrow from the Ground Up

Creating the Library of Tomorrow from the Ground Up by Laurie Putnam

A great article that talks about the philosophy behind the curriculum at the new Dutch LibrarySchool.

I was first intrigued by the fact that Dutch librarian training takes place at the undergrad level and that this program is the first of its kind at the graduate level.  Personally, I’ve always thought that having a four year undergrad program instead of a one year graduate program would give more credibility to the profession as well as give students a broader set of skills to leverage both in libraries and non-library settings. 

More importantly, however, I was fascinated by the four ideological buckets the school is using to guide the curriculum.  I think these buckets speak to why librarians can be so helpful in so many different environments.  In my own situation and from what I hear from colleagues at other companies, a major problem seem to be that non-library employers don’t understand the skill set librarians bring or how to leverage it.  They’re hung up on librarians as people who manage libraries.  And that’s understandable because that’s what we’ve done for the past hundred years. 

I’ve tried for a very long time to articulate why my background as a librarian gives me an edge over the other 25,000 analysts at The Company.  But this program seems to finally define it: 

It’s the knowledge of the intersections and ability to meld skills in technology, organization, culture and society in delivering contextual information that makes librarians powerful.

This ideology makes librarians more cross-functionally relevant in both traditional and non-traditional setting.  Of course I’m biased, but this is particularly valuable for those of who are mercenaries in non-traditional settings.  Because let’s face it: It’s not like the amount of jobs in traditional settings is growing. 

Libraries and librarians will always be around in some form, and I think this new ideological mix creates a new form of librarian that allows us to continue to be relevant.  I’d argue the LibrarySchool is not building the library of the tomorrow, but the librarian of tomorrow.