News around the IRC
Cataloging Resources
In my role as staff liaison to the Committee on Cataloging, I was pleased to help in adding the following new resource to SLA's web site, namely, "Reference Resources for Special Libraries" http://www.sla.org/committee/catalog1/index.html. This has some useful web links to general tools and references on cataloging and metadata, as well as the more technical resources on current developments on cataloging. Library of Congress Classification Outline, at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/lcco.html is a great site for answering those basic questions about LC Classification.
Consultation Service Continued
Libraries and the library profession have changed a great deal since the Consultation Service was set up in 1956. Planning libraries is now a full-time occupation, and the job of a professional library consultant. The focus of SLA's free consultation service has changed. Although we no longer plan full scale libraries free of charge, we have an excellent opportunity to help the profession grow and help create new opportunities for employment. Today the purpose of SLA's free consultation service is to provide management with strategic guidance on whether to establish a special library/information center, whether to abandon an existing one or whether to change an existing one. The consultation focuses on the strategic issues necessary for operating a library. We hear and discuss both problems and solutions. In most cases, we set the stage for step two--hiring the professional consultant. CONSULT Online, http://www.sla.org/consult/index.html, was set up for this purpose; to promote SLA member consultants as the natural choice for the consultancy work.
For those not familiar with CONSULT Online, a search on the database is free and is available to members and nonmembers interested in locating a consultant who may assist, on a normal commercial basis, with areas library management and services by subject specialty. There are over one-hundred search criteria to help find the most suitable consultant. CONSULT Online members may check their profiles by using Update or Submit a Profile to CONSULT Online on the introductory page at http://www.issinet.com/sla/consult/.
EIPs Added
Three more Electronic Information Packets (EIPs) have recently been added to SLA's web resources. The information audit is popular again after a number of years. See http://www.sla.org/membership/irc/audit.html for more information. In my view, the information audit is going to increase in popularity as more and more money is spent on expensive information retrieving software. Senior management is going to want to see what they have gained for their considerable investment. Its name will probably change as there is a negative connotation in the word audit, but the concept will be the same.
Library Instruction and End-User Training, see http://www.sla.org/membership/irc/enduser.html, is becoming an important part of the information professional's new job description, and will become increasingly more so as we develop the skills of providing value-added information, leaving the more basic research to the end-user.
The new Internet design EIP on Designing and Developing Library Web Pages needs no introduction to today's information professional. For information on this topic, see http://www.sla.org/membership/irc/intdsign.html. The monthly additions to the EIPs are listed on the web site under EIP Updates at http://www.sla.org/membership/irc/.
KM: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Larry Prusak in his keynote address at SLA's 1999 conference referred to the fact that U.S. industry had recently spent nearly $10 billion on new information systems. I suspect that a significant amount of this has been spent on new "Knowledge Management" systems. Not only has this become one of the industry's new buzz words, but the software industry has jumped on the bandwagon and created new software or rehashed a lot of their old software to be the panacea for managing your organization's knowledge. There is no doubt that technology has facilitated the retrieval and dissemination of information, documents, and records around an organization, but that does not create a knowledge management system. Organizations are discovering, at their cost, that knowledge management is about people, company cultures, and the willingness to communicate, not just expensive software. I fear most organizations that have just wasted a king's ransom on new information software are unlikely to be keen to tell the public or their stockholders. This gets back to my earlier comment about the new wave of information audits that I envisage. At some stage management is going to ask for investigations into their investment into information by instigating information audits, or whatever you call it. We shall see!
For more information, contact John Latham (john@sla.org).
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