Information Outlook, VOl. 6, No. 10, October 2002
Evolving: The Stories of Three Information Professionals
by Leslie Shaver
Leslie Shaver is editor of Information Outlook.
Facing Change Head On
What is change? Though there are many definitions and connotations to this word, one version of Webster's describes it most succinctly as an "alter in condition."
It seems hard to imagine that a word that inspires fear in so many can be easily summed up with one simple, three-word phrase. Yet, there it is.
Like many others, information professionals have seen their conditions altered during the past decade. The explosion of the Internet and the tech boom have redefined job roles, while the ensuing "bust" has forced everyone to re-evaluate their roles in and value to their organizations. Such self-assessment can sometimes bring some hard realities. When these cold, hard truths hit home, there is no choice but to embrace change.
This kind of change can encompass everything from professional lives (making personnel changes in the information center or even offering new services) to personal lives (having more flexible schedules to fit changing family needs).
In this month's Information Outlook, we profile four individuals who have not only embraced change but seem to thrive on it. These people (like Deb Hunt, Rose Falanga and Muhammad Yaqub Chaudhary earlier in this issue) have ridden the waves of change for personal advancement.
First, there is Carol Ginsburg, a person long known to many SLA members. Throughout her 20-plus year tenure at Bankers Trust and then Deutsche Bank, Ginsburg has seen change approaching and reacted to it. Now, upon her retirement, she takes a look back at her career.
Then there are two people who haven taken almost opposite routes through the information field.
Nora Paul started out in the traditional librarian role, getting an MLS and taking a job at the news library of the Miami Herald. But somewhere along the way, she took a different path and is now in charge of a program at the University of Minnesota that could completely alter the way online news is delivered. Still, she has an eye on the library worldlooking at ways to increase the effectiveness of news libraries.
Loraine Laurino did not start out as a librarian. She began her career as teacher. But, now, after a string of career moves, she finds herself as manager of knowledge services for Kurt Salmon Associates in Atlanta. At Kurt Salmon, Laurino built an information infrastructure that promises to ease the workload of the company's associates throughout the world.
While these three people come from diverse backgrounds, they have utilized very similar tools on their way to success. When looking at their stories, these key traits jump out:
· VisionWhether it was Ginsburg grabbing the attention of those higher up in the company or Paul grasping the power of new media, each of the four individuals recognized opportunity.
· DecisivenessOnce these individuals saw what was on the horizonwhether it was a better way to deliver content (Laurino) or the possibilities of digital libraries (Ginsburg)they decided to provide it to their users.
· FlexibilityEach of theses four individuals have been able to transition between roles when needed. Whether it was learning a new skill to make herself more valuable (in the case of Laurino or Ginsburg), these information professionals have been able to adjust to shifting circumstances.
While change was not always voluntary for these three people, they were prepared and made the best of it once they saw it on the horizon. And, with the ever-changing state of the information industry, this is all that can be done in times when conditions become altered.
If know of a change agent or innovator (or just someone with a really keen eye for what the future holds) please e-mail us at leslie@sla.org.
Carol Ginsburg
Carol Ginsburg has been in the information profession for the last 26 years. For 26 of those years she has dealt with changeeither reacting to it or leading it.
When Ginsburg realized that working in a library was her passion during a stint at the Lynnbrook Public Library, she got a full-time library job. When a friend told her Bankers Trust needed a librarian, she shifted gears from an administrative job and moved. When Bankers Trust needed a new way to organize information, she discovered the possibilities of digital information and championed it with her company. When mammoth German bank Deutsche merged with Bankers Trust, she piloted the information center through the changes. And when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11 and forced Deutsche to abandon its building, it was Ginsburg who helped organized the logistics of putting her information workers in temporary office spaces.
So with things returning to normalcy, how does Ginsburg celebrate? By initiating more changethis time moving from her role as managing director at Deutsche to a consultant's role.
A Career of Change
Ginsburg's career in the information profession did not begin in some large corporate library. It began in the Lynnbrook Public Library on Long Island in 1976.
"I started out in a public library working night and weekends," she said. "I enjoyed it so much that I could not believe they were paying me for it."
This experience catapulted her into a full-time job with the Queensboro Public Library, also in Long Island. But a citywide budget cut squeezed her out of this job and into a new role in a one-person special library with Sales and Marketing Executives International (this is when she joined SLA). She then moved onto an administrative job with the New York Society of Certified Public Accountants. In the early 1980s another opportunity came along when a co-worker told her about a job opening with Bankers Trust.
"At that point I was organizing information, but was not in a traditional librarian job," she said. "I was not really interested in the Bankers Trust job at first because I was pretty happy where I was. But I met this woman [Sue Lawley, her first supervisor at Bankers Trust] who knew nothing about libraries. Since I knew nothing about banking, it was a match made in heaven."
Ginsburg's first chore at Bankers Trust was to increase the company's digital presence.
"No one in the company understood what was going on in the information industry," she said. "I barely understood it. Once I grasped the power of digital information, I led the charge and became a consultant to the rest of the bank. We delivered the New York Times information bank and we went into Dialog. We were able to pull things for our customers that may have taken much longer if we had gone through the old printed index route. We were on the cutting edge and it was very exciting."
Ginsburg's ascension in the company continued when it was seeking to rid itself of bulky credit files.
"We were the ones they chose to look at companies that could scan things in and get rid of paper," she said. "We went to each department and found out what collections they had. We were able to make these collections available to everyone in the bank, so they could know where things were located. This project made me very visible."
And through this she proved the library's value.
"You have to have champions," she said. "You need to work with the revenue-producing folks to make them a part of your team. It's very important that the people who are the revenue producers understand how libraries can help. It's a return on investment. You really have to prove that."
One way to do this is being proactive in getting the messages about your services out there. Ginsburg does this by training new hires and putting "infograms" out about library services. These strategies, along with her earlier accomplishments, helped her three-person librarywith Ginsburg, a microfiche manager and an administrative support persongrow into an operation that employed 100 information professionals around the world. Ginsburg personally traveled to Hong Kong and Toyko to start libraries.
"When we realized we were getting a lot of requests from one part of the world, we thought we would benefit from having information professionals there," she said. "So, first we saw a need. Then, depending on the economy, we were able to fill it."
Despite the apparent need for information professionals in these places, there would always be something to prove.
"Sometimes you would go somewhere and they would talk about how they could not live without these huge files," she said. "It took a while to get professionals in there to prove to them that they did not need rooms and rooms of files. Little by little, we proved ourselves."
While Ginsburg and her army of information professionals were often successful in proving their value, there were some disappointing exceptions.
"We wanted three people in Toyko, but the business would only pay for two," she said. "At the end of the day, no matter how good you were, it was what the bankers were willing to pay for. When the business grew, we could add staff and when the business shrunk, we had to reduce staff. It is a cycle year after year."
Unfortunately, the economy is at the low ebb of the cycle now. Like many librarians, Ginsburg has been forced to face these realities.
"We are not getting any good stars for marketing anymore because our budgets have shrunk," she said. "Our gold stars are from cutting expenses and staff right now. People are so concerned about expense that I think we are almost in panic mode."
But just because staff reductions are in vogue, it doesn't mean it is the best solution, Ginsburg said.
"When you compare the support in libraries to what the bankers are making, it is not the most efficient use of a high-paid banker to be out there trolling the Web," she said. "I think people are very anxious right now. It's a very conservative and difficult time."
These difficulties have not been made any easier by a merger and the 9/11 terrorist attackstwo events that forced Ginsburg to make more drastic changes. The mergera 1999 union by Bankers Trust and Deutschemeant a lot of changes from Ginsburg.
"There were just two ways of doing things," she said. "It was not the Bankers Trust or the Deutsche way, but the new way. Mergers are very hard and stressful. But at the end of it, I still have an operation I am proud of."
While Ginsburg could see the Deutsche merger from a mile off, no one could have anticipated what happened on September 11. Her building (which is still called the Bankers Trust building) was located just across from the twin towers.
Days after escaping the terror with the rest of her colleagues, she had to turn around and get a makeshift information center functioning without any supplies, equipment or books from the old library. These things may never be recovered from the old building, which is still standing, but had 24 stories taken out when the towers collapsed.
"We all huddled together in one of our separate offices in Midtown," she said. "I did have two locations in New York. Then we were able to get more space and pretty much accommodate everyone."
Before this space became available, there were not enough phones and computers for everyone to function properly. Ginsburg needed flexibility from her department with some people working at home and others working in shifts at the Midtown location.
"We all needed to be together," she said. "A number of us escaped together. It really changes you. People felt more like family because we had been through something together. It was a difficult situation, but we got through. I have a wonderful team."
Throughout all the changes in Ginsburg's career, her team has helped her manage change. As he looks back, she realizes this has been a key ingredient to her many accomplishments.
"None of my success would have happened without having the right people in place."
"At the end of the day, no matter how good you were, it was what the bankers were willing to pay for. When the business grew, we could add staff and when the business shrunk, we had to reduce staff. It is a cycle year after year."
Loraine Laurino
It's often said that people change careers at least six times during their lifetime. Changing careers isn't necessarily just opting to try something new; sometimes it's an evolutionary process that culminates in the ultimate opportunity. This is the case for Loraine Laurino, manager of knowledge services for Kurt Salmon Associates.
Laurino came out of college more than 20 years ago with visions of becoming a teacher. But a summer break in the marketing department of The Carlson Group Inc., an architectural engineering firm, took her down an unlikely path that eventually resulted in a career in the information profession.
"I needed a summer job to supplement my teaching salary," Laurino said. "I had a friend who worked for Carlson. When I interviewed I wasn't looking for a career change. As it turned out, their marketing coordinator was leaving and they needed a replacement. I tried it out, liked it, and never went back to public education."
After her son was born, Laurino sought a more flexible work schedule. This resulted in a move to The Facility Group in 1987, where she handled proposal development, marketing and public relations. "While I enjoyed the marketing and writing components of my job, my passion for teaching and sharing knowledge began to resurface," she said.
This time she moved to a small software training company where she worked as a curriculum developer, training coordinator, director of education and general manager. When the industry moved toward web-based training, Laurino began to look for other opportunities.
This led her to Kurt Salmon Associates, which was in the midst of a global software conversion when she arrived in 1997. Kurt Salmon Associates is a global retail and consumer products consulting firm. Founded in 1935 as a one-man (Kurt Salmon) apparel and textile consultancy, the firm has grown to 27 offices worldwide with information and knowledge needs that must be shared across the globe. Laurino's initial role was to provide end-user training in the United States, Europe and Asia. But company interest in intranets and information sharing opened new opportunities.
"I was very interested in the content and knowledge sharing components," she said. "Knowledge management was just beginning to emerge as a viable component of business strategy. My exposure to the technology side of the equation along with my training and education background sparked the beginnings of my next 'career opportunity.'"
In the process of collecting and organizing content for the intranet, Laurino broadened the scope to include the company's corporate library and Internet research services. The result was KSA's Knowledge Resource Center (KRC). The KRC has taken the firm's intellectual capital and transformed it from a dusty archive into an electronic resource that can be accessed globally.
Three years after the release of the company Intranet, KSA is preparing to move to the next phase of its knowledge management strategy, a corporate portal.
"KSA's information needs have out paced the capacity of our current Intranet. Our associates are looking for more advanced search and retrieval capabilities, a more user-friendly interface, and accessibility via the web from any location globally," Laurino said.
In addition, when KSA moves to the corporate portal, it will be consolidating its knowledge repositories in North America, Europe and Asia.
With our increasing global economy, Laurino believes more companies will experience the challenge of connecting corporate knowledge to enable all employees, worldwide, to use it.
"Especially for companies whose value is in the minds of its employees, such as professional services, rather than in products, such as widgets, it is crucial to develop a mechanism to share knowledge" she said.
Laurino advises companies start with the following:
· Survey at least 20 percent of the firm to determine where the knowledge resides. A quick e-mail survey asking employees to identify where they go when they really need information can be very enlightening.
· Determine a plan to capture, organize and share the knowledge assets. Here you want to map your KM initiative to a specific component(s) of your company's business strategy. For example, KSA has mapped its content organization around the firm's client and service development framework.
· Develop and implement an appropriate solution that maximizes available technology and human resources within the firm. Using your plan, identify technologies you have in place vs. what you need to acquire, staffing requirements to handle the workload and costs for the initiative vs. what you have in your budget.
· Seek out and nurture sponsors. Without sponsorship, your initiatives will encounter slow or no progress throughout the organization.
Nora Paul
Nora Paul has experienced journalism from many anglesas a librarian working at The Miami Herald and as an instructor at the Poynter Institute teaching reporters and editors about the value of a good news library. But two years ago she took on a new role, one that could eventually change the way news is delivered online.
Paul, a 25-year veteran of the information industry who holds an MLS from Texas Women's University, stepped out of her role as a librarian to explore the limitless potential of the Internet as a way to transmit news as director of Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota. The institute is part of a campus-wide initiative to study the potential of new media.
To Paul, the decision to move to Minnesota was a no brainer. She would get a chance to look at a world outside of journalism and, most importantly, an opportunity to run a department that would study the Internet's enormous potential and impact on news delivery.
"We are looking at how to change the pattern of how a new media form is introduced," she said. "In the past, the same old media was used on the new media platform. For a very long time, television news was basically radio news. The only difference was that you could see the newscaster. What we are trying to do is collapse the amount of time between the introduction of this new space and the creation of content."
Paul has already brought a group of experts together for a series of three workshops in Minneapolis.
"This was an invited group," she said. "These were people who were chomping at the bit to take the story to the next level. It was exciting for them to be exposed to people from other disciplines who have very strong and interesting ideas about what the news media can be."
The workshops covered:
· Playing the NewsThis workshop brought computer game designers and artists together with journalists to discuss how the interactive environment of games might be applied to news storytelling.
· Painting the NewsThis workshop brought in digital artists to talk about their approach to the marriage of digital text, images, sound and video and how their creative packaging for the purposes of art might inspire innovative ways to display online news stories.
· Sensing the NewsThis workshop focused on emerging audio and video techniques and the impact they might have on the presentation of news stories. These techniques included things like 3-D imaging and 360 degree video.
Some of the ideas that came out of these sessions could drastically change the way news is presented to the public.
"Delivering news is not just about storytelling," Paul said. "It is about storymaking. How do you give people the opportunity to be a part of the creation of the story itself? The question is how to provide users with an experience rather than just content and trying to determine what kind of experience is appropriate for what kind of message."
Don't think reading the news is an experience? Look no further than a post-9/11 MSNBC site that allows each viewer to play the role of baggage handler, Paul said. On the site, the viewer looked at an x-ray machine as luggage passed through to find, explosives, guns and knives. If the luggage moved along the conveyor belt too fast, the viewer could slow it down. But there was a priceanxious passengers wanting to board their respective flights would yell at the viewer as he or she inspected luggage.
"We want to test the effects of different forms of storytelling on the audience," she said. "Does this give you a better understanding of the plight of the baggage instructor or is reading an 18-inch story on the plight of the baggage instructor a better method?"
While these projects have taken a good deal of Paul's time, she has not forgotten about the news library. She is currently surveying executive editors and managing editors from media outlets around the country to determine the information structure in their organizations. This includes looking at their information access, information training, information quality control, information archiving, information revenue and information alerts.
Her vision is for this survey to provide the broad outline for a new Center for News Informatics. This new center, allied with the institute for New Media Studies, would attempt to influence the news media's use of information assets. The goal is for the center to become a resource for the entire news industry and help it make better choices in processing, distributing and gathering information.
"With the Center for News Informatics, I can balance my foundation in news librarianship and information management with my new interest in new media news delivery," Paul said. 
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