 |
UCLA MLIS Student Group |
Good afternoon! It's great to be at UCLA, and I want to thank David Cappoli for inviting me to join you today.
Less than a month from now, many of you will leave the land of the Bruins, MLIS in hand, to take your place in the land of the bears.
Put your hand up if you are graduating June 15. Leave those hands up.
Now, put your hand down if you have not yet settled on a job.
Let's give a hand to the fortunate people with their hands still up!!!
I am not going to try to sugar-coat the obvious: it's a tough job market. If you plan to remain in California, you know only too well that state and local cutbacks make the job outlook in public and academic libraries pretty iffy.
However, that does not mean that you are not going to be able to find a job, and it does not mean that you will not use the degree you have worked so hard to earn.
I will start by saying something that you have no doubt heard before, but it is very important to keep it in mind: You only need one job. And while the number of openings may be fewer, jobs will indeed open. And you have just the skills to make sure that you know about them when they do.
If you have a substantial trust fund that was not affected by the turbulence in the financial sector--and wasn't managed by Bernie Madoff--you can afford to wait around until things improve. Don't worry . . . I am not going to ask anyone to raise hands!
If, however, you do not have the luxury to do that, I do have some advice.
You have been in school for a long time, and you may be looking forward to a time when you do not have to learn something new every day. Sorry about that! Today and always, you must view yourself as a work in progress. When it comes to learning and skills sets, I advise you to remember what I am told the letters "UCLA" really stand for: "Under Construction Like Always."
That same attitude and flexibility will help you secure a job that will make good use of your MLIS degree.
So . . . you have scrubbed your Facebook page of anything you do not want a potential employer to see. You have retired that "partyLA@hotmail" e-mail moniker. Your resume is not only wonderful, but you have forced all your friends and relatives to proofread it--you would not believe how many job applicants are rejected because of resume typos.
Now I would suggest that you take a look at special librarianship.
David Cappoli tells me that most of you are familiar with special libraries and SLA--but he says that a short review would not hurt.
I want to start by clarifying the term "special library." Traditionally, a special library is a specialized collection of information, usually assembled to further the goals of a particular institution or industry.
When SLA was founded one hundred years ago, the United States was enjoying what has been referred to as the "Second Industrial Revolution"--a sort of perfect storm when new manufacturing techniques, new materials, and newly available transportation and distribution networks created a flurry of activity--and a crying need for information. Some librarians stepped forward to meet the demand for focused, timely information that entrepreneurs were seeking.
The early partnerships between librarians and entrepreneurs were based on a revolutionary idea: information could be practical, not just intellectual. Together, they could put knowledge to work.
Soon, libraries, corporations, museums, universities and more were assembling their own specialized collections with the help of a new breed of librarian . . . the specialized librarians.
Today's special librarians have the same spirit of adventure, but much has changed. Early special librarians joined together to form SLA because it was so difficult for them to find the kind of specialized information they sought.
Today, one of their most important roles is separating the wheat from the chaff--that is, identifying what is relevant, what is reliable, and what is important in the sea of information that surrounds us. Good librarians know good information when they see it.
Another thing that has changed dramatically is the jobs and job titles that fall within the realm of special librarianship. SLA's 11,000 members in 75 countries hold more than 2,000 different job titles. One of the best ways to understand the myriad ways they apply their skills is to look at some of those titles, straight from our membership roles:
| Archivist Cartographer Client relations manager Competitive Intelligence analyst Compliance manager Content manager Curator of visual resources e-Learning specialist Electronic resources coordinator Head of sales |
Information architect Knowledge manager Knowledge integrator Manager of business intelligence Museum curator Network administrator Records manager Research editor Technical writer |
Are you getting the idea? All of these jobs require abilities that you have gained in finding, organizing, analyzing, and disseminating information. All of them require the knowledge you have gained of systems that store and manage that information, of Web 2.0 and other new communication technologies--and, for lack of a better term, "the love of the hunt" that probably got you into library and information science to begin with.
At SLA, we use the blanket term "information professional" to describe the enterprising people who are our members. Info pros work for a variety of employers-- corporations . . . government agencies . . . health, academic and cultural institutions and the like. More and more of them work for consulting firms. Many are going into solo practice.
The workplace of the info pro may be a library . . . but then again, it probably isn't. It may have stacks . . . but it probably doesn't. It may involve lots of face-to-face interaction . . . but online interaction will surely be a great part of it.
There are, in fact, few aspects of an info pro's work that are not subject to continual change--except their most important function . . . ensuring that their organization has the right information at the right time so it can compete successfully in the marketplace.
In a corporation, that may translate into intelligence about products, consumers or the competition. In a university, it can involve tracking everything from admissions patterns to research grants. For healthcare organizations, reliable access to the right information at the right time may be a matter of life and death. Government agencies must gauge the economic impact of their actions. Info pros play an important role in the procurement process of many organizations.
Information Outlook, SLA's magazine, recently profiled a young member who works as an independent, embedded research consultant for a large market research company. He says it is his "dream job." His job is to identify trends in the global market and consumer habits, which means he spends hours reading Facebook, analyzing market research, and more.
Another young member--who is also a new member of SLA's board of directors--does research for a Canadian strategy and public affairs firm that prides itself in operating with the "speed, teamwork and discipline of a political campaign."
Some people are attracted to librarianship for cause-related reasons--they want to work in disaster relief, for example. So I want you to know that there are endless cause-related opportunities for information professionals, too.
I know of one young woman who had a part-time job doing data entry at her local United Way while she was in library school, and she loved working there. So she convinced the fundraising department that she had all the skills and knowledge they needed in a prospect researcher. Now she helps hundreds of local charities identify potential individual and corporate donors to fund their efforts, and she has the satisfaction of making a real difference in her own community.
Other information professionals work for research institutions that are working to find cures for diseases, new sources of energy, ways to improve the environment and more.
That is now. What does the future hold?
Once the economy recovers--and it will--organizations will be judged by factors beyond how much money they bring through their doors. There will be new standards of accountability and greater transparency in how effectively human, financial, and even environmental resources are used . . . as well as the organization's track record in achieving the objectives it has set for itself.
In this environment, the information professional will continue to use technology to manage information--and sound knowledge management will become a strategic tool and the hallmark of the successful organization.
In a recent survey, Accenture concluded that middle managers spend more than a quarter of their time looking for the information they need to do their jobs--and that when they find it, it is often wrong. That means that valuable human capital is being squandered--and that critical corporate decisions are being made on the basis of bad information. Some argue that these bad decisions are one of the major factors in our current economic plight.
Part of the problem, of course, is the explosion of information around us--the good, the bad and the downright useless. Innovations that are in the pipeline right now, like spoken word searching, will only add fuel to the fire.
Information professionals will play an increasingly important role in applying analytic principles and skills to their organization's decision making process. The right decision can only be made with the right information.
Too often, however, the organization already has the right information in hand. It simply hasn't been made available to the people who really need it. In a recent survey done for SLA by Outsell showed that no matter where they work, what executives most want from their organization's library is information delivered to their desktop.
It is worth noting that managing the physical library and print collection--which librarians tend to consider their most important role--ranked much lower, especially with corporate executives.
These findings, by the way, are part of a massive exhaustive series of research studies about the information profession SLA has undertaken as part of its Alignment Project.
One thing that we confirmed is that information professionals spend as much time analyzing information as they do gathering it. That is how they are able to provide their organizations with the insights that fuel innovation and facilitate solid decision making.
They save their organizations time and money by adding value to information. And speaking of value--information professionals are valued for their commitment to continuous learning and their ability to help organizations build a knowledge culture.
Tomorrow's information professionals will employ a marketing approach to strategic management and problem solving. They will be evaluated on their ability to consistently get the right information to the right people, quickly and securely. They will be so well attuned to their organization's priorities, strategies and financial picture that they will anticipate its information needs. They will guide their organizations to opportunities that will emerge from the post-recession economy.
The most successful info pros will be superb team players with excellent communication skills and an understanding of the knowledge base, work style, strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team . . . including themselves. They will know exactly how each team member wants information delivered.
Think of it this way: yesterday's information pro was a gatherer . . . today's is a trapper. Tomorrow's will be a full collaborator.
Collaboration is, of course, the name of the game. First there was user-generated content; then came social networking, wikis, and the rest of Web 2.0.
Now Web 3.0 allows a new model of teamwork in research and development. Information professionals will be indispensable, embedded members of collaborative teams, using their knowledge and skills to "deep dive" for information, where others may have paddled on the surface. Their abilities in not only finding but analyzing information will advance innovative approaches to problem solving.
In this brave new world, the importance of sharing knowledge and experience within the information profession will be paramount. Bringing information professionals together is our job at SLA, and that is one thing that will not change.
You have advantages over your predecessors, and it's important to exploit them. Unlike those who went before you, you know without a doubt that the skills you now have are just the beginning of what you will need to learn in the course of your career. You were born using technology, and most of you are far less intimidated by it than those of us who typed our papers on an IBM Selectric--and, yes, IBM did make typewriters back in the olden days! Finally, technology has made it much easier for you to start forming the professional network you will need throughout your life.
But don't limit yourself to your classmates. Professional associations are incredibly important, especially for people in the information business. SLA is the only global organization for information professionals and their strategic partners. SLA members have unparalleled opportunities to connect with other information professionals to share ideas and experiences, learn new skills and tap into a world of information carefully assembled to benefit them.
Mastering new information technologies will be a career-long priority for you--not, as is the case today, something info pros do after hours. A professional organization like SLA will help you keep your career on track by linking you with the right people, the right information, and the best tools.
You have chosen a field that will offer you an abundance of opportunities, challenges and rewards. These are not easy times, but with some flexibility and creativity, I believe you will find fulfillment--whether you choose to work in special librarianship or in a more conventional librarian role.
I wish you every success and hope that we will meet again.
RSS
Feedback form
