10 Questions: Dru Frykberg
Her career as a reporter led Dru Frykberg to become better acquainted with libraries and the valuable services they provide.
BY STUART HALES
Libraries generally aren't viewed as economic engines, but as the economic recession deepened during 2009 and 2010, many libraries became de facto employment centers. Job seekers crowded into public libraries to take advantage of free computer and Internet access, which enabled them to search job listings, create resumes and cover letters, and contact employers.
Dru Frykberg, the new president-elect of the SLA Minnesota Chapter, is actively involved in assisting those who are looking for work, but she also helps those seeking to hire. She's the librarian for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), which helps promote business and workforce development within the state. The position at DEED completes a trifecta of sorts for Dru, who has also been a public librarian and an academic librarian.
Information Outlook spoke to Dru in December, when economic activity increases in anticipation of the Christmas holidays.
Q: How long have you been with the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED)?
I started working at DEED in July 2006, so I've been here almost five years. My title is librarian, and my main focus is supporting the information needs of our 1,500 employees located throughout the state.
The employees are our primary clientele, but the library is also open to the public. Our public users are mostly interested in pursuing exporting opportunities. DEED includes the Minnesota Trade Office, which is the point of contact for people who want to expand their business internationally. I help the Minnesota Trade Office assist these people by showing them how to conduct research on countries and markets.
DEED also includes 49 workforce centers located around the state. The workforce centers are designed for job seekers and businesses wanting to hire workers. They have research areas that job seekers can use--there are computers for searching jobs, creating resumes and submitting applications, and books about writing cover letters and preparing for interviews. But the centers aren't libraries per se.
My library serves the workforce center staff who assist these clients. For example, we provide information to help staff members develop workshops.
Q: This sounds like what many public libraries are experiencing--people who are out of work are using local libraries as makeshift offices, creating resumes on the computers and sending e-mails to prospective employers. What does a workforce center offer that a public library doesn't?
The advantage of the workforce centers is that people can receive individual assistance on such things as how to use our job bank, MinnesotaWorks. net, and participate in workshops about networking and using social media. The disadvantage of workforce centers is that they don't have as many computers as most public libraries, and they aren't open as many hours as most public libraries.
I've tried to help facilitate a partnership between the workforce centers and public libraries so they can work together. That's one of the projects I've been working on this past year--starting a conversation between the public libraries and DEED as well as promoting DEED's services and resources to librarians.
Q: Workforce assistance services are especially helpful during economic recessions, but that's also when governments cut budgets, and libraries are often among the first programs to go under the knife. How has the recession affected your library?
Probably the biggest impact I've felt is that my former colleague, who was a full-time librarian as well, retired in January 2009. She left during a hiring freeze, so she was never replaced. Instead, the agency opted--and I've been grateful for this--to hire a digital information specialist who has a library degree.
This specialist does a lot of things for the agency, including developing a digital library and overseeing our Facebook and Twitter presences. But at the same time, the library also lost a full-time librarian who was on the front lines providing research assistance. So I'm now the only full-time librarian at DEED.
Q: As a college undergraduate, you majored in journalism and criminal justice. Did you do anything professionally in those fields, and what prompted you to switch to library science?
When I was attending college, students in the journalism program were required to have a double major to provide expertise in a certain subject area. I opted for criminal justice because I thought it would prepare me to cover the police beat and the courts.
After graduation, I worked as a reporter in Nebraska for some community newspapers. Through my reporting, I developed an interest in libraries because I was covering city government, and some communities at that time were doing exciting things with libraries like raising money for new buildings and planning automation projects. Libraries were always invaluable to me as a reporter because I knew I could always turn to them to verify the spelling of a word or quickly provide information, such as the time we needed information about Hepatitis A because the newspaper had just found out about a hepatitis outbreak right before the news deadline.
All of this was before the Internet, so getting background information required making phone calls or taking a trip to the local library. If you were lucky, your newspaper would have a really good in-house library, but the newspapers I worked for didn't have one. Nowadays, newspapers are eliminating their libraries, but I still think it would be a dream job to work as a librarian for a news organization. I really hope that news operations come up with new business models that could make them more profitable and allow them to invest in people who gather and vet information and help contribute to a quality product.
Anyway, it was through reporting that I developed an appreciation for, and an interest in, libraries. So, after I finished my reporting career, I went back to school for my library degree.
When I graduated, I worked at the Lake County Public Library in Indiana. I started as a reference librarian, then managed one of the branches. I was there for about five years. I left Indiana to go to Iowa State University, where I was the librarian for the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. From there I went to DEED.
Q: How did you hear about SLA, and when and why did you join?
I heard about SLA when I was at Iowa State. I credit my predecessor there, Susan Lerdal, who was very involved in SLA, for encouraging me to check it out and join what was then just becoming the Iowa Chapter of SLA.
I went to my first SLA Annual Conference in Los Angeles in 2002, and I remember being just blown away by the programming. At that time, I was working at the Greenlee School, and I was assisting students who were majoring in journalism and advertising and public relations. Being able to learn from information professionals at advertising agencies and newspapers and other news media was just what I needed.
Q: You've been a longtime member of both the Advertising and Marketing Division and the Business and Finance Division. What benefits have you enjoyed by being a member of these divisions?
My agency, DEED, is all about marketing Minnesota--getting people to move here and work here, and encouraging businesses to locate and expand in Minnesota--so I have a strong interest in advertising and marketing. That division has been especially helpful to me because it's an easy group to get to know and become involved in their activities. The discussion list and conference programming have kept me up to speed on the marketing resources that are invaluable to those in the field.
The division has also helped me in terms of marketing the DEED library and keeping co-workers aware of our services. The library is always part of new employee orientations, and we also host an open house for new hires to introduce ourselves and answer questions. In addition, we publish what we call DEED Library Alerts, which are e-mail newsletters that go out to specific employee groups. There are about 17 of these--for example, there's one for social media marketing and one about the green economy. These alerts have been very popular--I've found that after we send them out, we get a lot of requests and reference questions, which we love.
We also offer workshops and Webinars as part of our "Get Search-Savvy" series. These are usually concise sessions about things like how to use a database or Twitter. These sessions allow us to share information, contribute to professional development, and promote the library and help keep it relevant to people.
Ultimately, the best marketing tactic is delivering excellent customer service--responding quickly and accurately and following up. I really believe that when you have a successful transaction with a colleague, it has a snowball effect. That person is going to rely on you again and tell his or her co-workers about you.
As for the Business and Finance Division, I joined it when I started working at DEED because there is definitely a business librarianship component to what I do here. I figured the division would help get me up to speed on business research resources and strategies. It really has been quite useful to me, because I can turn to people in the division when I need help.
For example, when my agency was trying to obtain a list of the top private companies in the United States, I was able to turn to another division member, Anne Mintz, who at the time was the librarian at Forbes. She put me in touch with that list and actually worked with her colleagues to reformat the list in a way that would be most helpful to me. So being in this division and in the Advertising and Marketing Division has helped me get to know people I can turn to when I have questions.
Q: You've been a public librarian and an academic librarian, and now you're a government librarian. How would you compare and contrast these experiences?
What I especially like about my current job is that a lot of people become librarians because they're interested in working with information and they enjoy research, but as a public librarian or an academic librarian, much of your time is spent teaching other people to conduct research. In my role at DEED, people turn to me to do research for them. I like being able to jump in and get my hands dirty researching a topic.
Also, in this setting, I've really been able to get to know my clients. I guess that can be done in other settings, but here I'm working with them as colleagues, collaborating on projects and attending meetings together. This gives me a good opportunity to identify the information needs within the agency and show co-workers my worth and value.
Q: The SLA Alignment Project encourages information professionals to integrate their libraries into the business objectives of the organization and to speak the language of executives. How well do you think those recommendations apply to librarians in government settings?
I think they're just as valuable in government settings as they are in private enterprise. Within our agency, we have a mission and goals and objectives, just as businesses do. It's important for the library to support that mission and those goals and objectives.
One of the things I took away from the findings of the Alignment Project was the need to speak the same language throughout the organization. When it came time for me to write the annual report for the library, mirroring the language of the agency's mission was important.
Q: As you look down the road, what do you think you'll need to learn to stay on the leading edge of the information profession?
Staying on top of technology is a constant need. In the years ahead, I think there's going to be even more of a demand to communicate and share information with colleagues wherever they happen to be. Right now, my colleagues have Blackberries and I can share information with them through my e-mail account, but at some point we'll probably want to consider being able to text back and forth via smartphone and make our online resources more accessible to mobile technology.
I'm in kind of an interesting situation, because many of my colleagues are analysts--regional analysts, economic analysts, labor market analysts--so I haven't been called upon to provide analyses like I think some information professionals are asked to do. But this doesn't mean that I won't be asked to do this in the future, to take the information I find to a deeper level. So that's an area of expertise I know I'll want to keep an eye on.
Q: You worked as a reporter for a few years. If you were covering the library beat today, what would you write about? What "scoop" would you share with your readers?
Librarians are all about helping people work smarter and faster. I often get asked by people why a government agency needs a library, and I explain that we're here to provide information to help the agency's employees do their jobs. We collect information, evaluate it, and make it accessible. Having an information professional on staff to do these things saves time and improves the end result of your work.
Just today I heard from a client who said my research services freed him to do other value-added work, such as pursuing grants and developing new programs and partnerships. He is preparing two grant applications, and he said the literature review would be the easiest part of the process because of the articles and reports the library has already provided him. SLA
| STUART HALES is publications editor at SLA and editor of Information Outlook. |
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