"Hi, So I hear you're a webmaster." "No." "A knowledge manager?" "No." "A librarian?" "No." "I give up!"

The New World of Information Professionalism

Rory Chase's recent article on changing roles for library professionals 2 deliberately flung down a challenge to a profession that is "in danger of being marginalized in the new knowledge era" or, worse, of being "made irrelevant". Are these rumors of impending professional death exaggerated? There is certainly a lot of debate, much of it in the pages of Information Outlook. As I negotiated Chase's arguments, I became uneasy. It wasn't just that Chase was searching for an identity that had not yet crystallized. It was that the introspective debate at the heart of the article seemed more and more beside the point, a little like the much mythologized (in Canada) Canadian preoccupation with the Canadian identity. In this respect the article was similar to many published in this field over the past ten or more years. Whatever their intent, and Chase's is admittedly alarmist, in order to be reformist, they are all rather plaintive and/or defensive. Typical is a piece in a recent issue of a trade journal, which shall remain nameless, which despite its aim— "to welcome the Internet as a new professional opportunity"—was really concerned with "justifying your role in an increasingly virtual world of information resources." In other words, the intent was basically to conserve an existing role. Articles like these are understandable, yes, but they are beside a lot of points. In the larger world, outside the covers of professional journals, things are moving too quickly for the luxury of in principle role discussions. Such discussions tend to take up a lot of time, which might be better used creating new products and services that satisfy needs. While there is always a time and a place for professional reflection, the moment at the eye of the cyclone (before the immediate changes have shown durable characteristics) is unlikely to yield stable conclusions.

As I suspect many realize, in our personal lives the only practical resolution to an identity debate is to "just do it". The key to determining what "information professionals" should be doing and how to consider their trade is to look at what there is a client or user need for. Since users are probably themselves unlikely to know what they want until they see it, the obvious tactic of choice must be opportunistic experiment. For service providers, self-questioning is likely to be both vague and endless. Why? Beyond the simple life truth that you can only know what you're good at by doing it, there's the more concrete and up to the minute reason cited recently by Doug Church3—"the end-user domain". To summarize his argument: a number of technological developments, particularly the Internet, have placed end-users in the driver's seat of the information world. And all kinds of traditional professionals, from doctors to lawyers, to, dare we say it?, information systems managers, are being forced to adjust. When I suggested a couple of years ago, to an IS professional, that access to the Internet in a sizable organization should be broader than the half dozen users their department had designated worthy, the response was a frustrated "Oh, well, I suppose we'll be letting everybody have it now."

Church reviews the roles that are most relevant to the "information professional" in this new world, where, he reports, "the designation ‘librarian' [is often] meaningless"3. His list of relevant roles (consultant, analyst, facilitator/trainer, Intranet content manager, product planner and marketer, corporate knowledge manager) bears many similarities to Chase's. Another list of "information professional" [IP] skills is provided in a recent article by Josh Duberman4, who has a very upbeat take on the relevance of IP competencies and laments the undermanagement of information evident across the Internet. But the key task for maintaining professional relevance is not abstract consideration of these generic roles and the appropriate terminology for them, which encourages an extension of the discussion of professional identity; it is what do the users who are funding services want done for them. If we want clarity in this area, it's better to go from there, the end-user, in, rather than the other way around.

When I first started working with computers, I learned one thing quickly: Whatever the producers and techies may think, or want to think, many mainstream users make no real distinction between hardware and software, let alone clients and servers. Just as a car is a car for many people—it allows them to get from A to B and if it doesn't, there's a place they can go to get it fixed—so for most a computer is a computer, a tool that allows them to get some work done. They may not even see the work as an information process at all. For them it doesn't matter whether the people behind the scenes are called computer scientists, cybrarians, informaticians, or, for that matter, publicists, or trainers, or researchers, or administrative assistants. When we've found out what needs to be done, we'll find that those with the skills and inclination to do it will find ways to do it. What is more, in an era where teamwork is increasingly recognized as the optimal way of conducting any process, rigid boundaries between roles are being eroded. The most important role erosion in the information industry, as Church noted, has been that between end-user and provider.

A further, and equally significant, erosion of landmarks is that between data, or information or knowledge, and function (or application). Church recognizes this when he says that "the use of information will become integrated with these [business] processes [and]information as a distinct resource may no longer exist"2. This is the organizational equivalent of the shift to object-oriented computer programming. Data and their applications are joined. When it occurs, information functions are embedded in purposes and outcomes, recognizing and producing immediate results for, strategic organizational ends. The information professional becomes a necessary part of an organizational project team, or non information staff adopt information roles. In either case, it is the organizational payoff that matters more than the precise means by which it is achieved.

The moral? Professionals of all kinds have to loosen up and improvise. Information is power, yes, for those who have the means to apply it. But, as important, information is much more difficult to control than other forms of "property". It spills and leaks and is everywhere. Spend your time creating applications that provide a pay off to your sponsors, wherever they may be. Real world evidence of these uncircumscribed user needs is supplied by the many workers with non specific educational backgrounds, including library science, who toil in the fields of the "information revolution". Recent catalogs of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies offer instructive examples. Syracuse, North America's original "information" school (founded in 1974) offers three Master's level programs: information resources management, science in telecommunications and network management, and library science. The list of jobs found by graduates indicate that though there are some differences, a number of them find similar work, whatever their formal preparation. Examples are database managers and technical support specialists. It is illuminating that in contrast to the openings found by graduates of the other two programs, the library science graduates' employment record is confined in the catalog to bar charts of the kinds of libraries they were working in. Even then, seventeen percent were not employed in libraries at all. And I suspect that of the eighty-three percent working in libraries a sizable portion of them are performing tasks that have no particular, let alone unique, connection to libraries. The reality is that the library in general exists as a historically grounded institution rather than a particular, or even useful, skill set. It is, with the exception of a couple of core tasks associated with the onsite collection, where somebody works, not what they do, for which the term library has relevance. Job profiles and their educational preparations are migrating fast and dynamically, as new applications and opprtunities proliferate.

In the example that follows, we offer a real life model of how this happens. We believe it offers lessons for all involved professionally in information services work. No disciplines are sacrosanct in the new world.

Women's College Hospital (WCH) Medical Library is a small special library serving a unique and prestigious institution focused on women's health. [Note: In late 1998, Women's College was merged with the larger Sunnybrook Health Science Centre to become the Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.] In 1994, professional consciousness of the possibilities of electronic networking had developed enough to stimulate the idea of an electronic women's health network that would link healthcare professionals in the specialty, and would be available through the Internet. The person chosen to create and maintain this new information utility was the medical librarian. Four years later, what was originally the limited Electronic Women's Health Directory had become the Women's College Hospital web page, covering all areas and departments of the hospital, with links to related utilities around the globe. It is a recognized success with use tripling in the last three years and hospital departments vying to create more content for their own sections. The medical librarian, a web neophyte in 1994, has become an accomplished webmaster. She has since been asked to create pages for other organizations and now tutors interested hospital staff on web page development. How did this come about? It is not a unique story in the recent annals of library professionals, but it is still unusual enough to provide useful lessons.

First, let us try to understand why the medical librarian was chosen for this task. The answer is a mixture of professional positives and negatives. On the positive side, management initiators of the electronic Women's Health Directory project recognized in the medical librarian a professional both willing and able to assume responsibility. Rather than assigning web task functions to the IS department they recognized the task before them matched the kinds of information organization and management skills of the medical librarian. On the professionally negative, but practically fortunate side, the medical librarian was both potentially "cheaper" and actually more enthusiastic about the task, than the staff of IS, the other department contender for web site responsibility. Since no financial resources were available at that time, willingness to work cheerfully for nothing, except the satisfaction of learning new skills, won the day.

Once responsibility had been assigned, the key for solidification of responsibility was successful implementation. After the Electronic Women's Health Directory was launched in mid-1995, usage steadily grew. Simultaneously, the special advantage of web publishing for information topics became increasingly apparent. With the hospital immersed, in 1995, in a political struggle for its survival as an independent institution, a number of departments saw the web site as an effective agent for community support. Departments like public relations, engaged in the communications side of the political struggle, used it to keep allies updated on the campaign. As staff turnover increased in the wake of fiscally induced layoffs and possible institutional extinction, human resources saw the benefit of listing career opportunities on the page. In quick succession, followed brief descriptions of all major programs and services, dynamic links to relevant sites, a local search engine and illustrative graphics.

By the end of 1996, the page had achieved sufficient breadth and useful detail to be selected for recognition by Jim Carroll, one of Canada's major Internet journalists at a presentation for the Ontario Hospital Association. Most interestingly, in terms of professional significance, he praised the practical utility of the page, the functional heart of which was still the Electronic Women's Health Directory. He compared it favorably to other hospital pages, which, at that date, were usually electronic versions of print brochures with little or no interactivity. The primary moral of this tale was that, unlike the non-library staff majority of site designers, an information professional with a library background had made niche information utility the primary purpose of the page. This had been recognized as the right emphasis by Carroll and the growing body of users. By the end of 1998, a WCH department like the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was creating its own page, with instruction from the medical library. The library had just installed its online catalog so WCH users could search hospital resources wherever they were located. The early idea of a limited directory of women's health practitioners had been substantially outgrown. The web page was now recognized as a utility for all staff and departments. The medical library's page had become the whole hospital's acknowledged site.

To this point we have learned these points: 1) being marginal or relatively undervalued can sometimes (but not very often, or for long) be an advantage; 2) library culture, or rather, its utilitarian base, is well suited to some key features of the World Wide Web; 3) there is no substitute for eager and conscientious dedication to a task; 4) abhor a vacuum if you think you can learn something by filling it.

So the story could end. A fairy tale, it seems, with the challenge to embrace the future and adapt to change successfully met. But there is more. It is now that we enter the real world that living by your creations unveils for you. If the air outside a traditional professional closet is invigorating, it can also be unsettling. The very emergence of new application needs like web sites, search engines, and intranets, for which virtually nobody had been formally trained until two or three years ago, prevents them being yet the special preserve of any one job classification, educational background, or organizational area. After three years the WCH web page had grown in visibility and prestige and its value had been recognized within the healthcare community. General Internet awareness had grown so exponentially the web (and anything connected with it) had become "cool".

The web page is only one example. We use it here to stand for many other unprecedented applications and services. Such applications, from digital archives to expertise databases, to extranets and intelligent search engines, are appearing every day. Which application is adopted by which organization and how is naturally dependent on an organization's distinct cultures and values and the range of skills and financial resources available to it. Common characteristics of new "knowledge management" applications, such as these, include accessibility, connectivity, informality, and speed.

But in an era of increasingly universal computer literacy and quickly developing applications, there is no assurance that any particular skill, or for that matter, any particular skill set required for such applications, will be found consistently in the same background. Still, rational accommodation must be made and over time new organizational and professional normalities will appear.

In the meantime, can or should any professional turn their hand to anything? There are significant voices suggesting this1. It seems reckless. But when we remember that information is now everybody's business, it appears as much a matter of practicality. The critical factor is not so much who has the key, or who was trained to use it, but it is who can use the key best. Though those information professionals previously known as librarians can argue that it is they who have the background most suited to the role of corporate "knowledge navigator" it is hard to find conclusive evidence to support the claim that an information professional with a subject speciality will necessarily be any better than, for example, a subject specialist with information skills. Even though there are yet few schools dedicated to producing the hybrid professionals in demand in new knowledge settings, there are many "knowledge management" jobs available and they are being filled by workers with a variety of backgrounds. Since the early 1990's Thomas Davenport has argued the relevance of "librarians" to the new knowledge empowered corporation. But though he seems to doubt the applicability of traditional information systems or computer science backgrounds to this new area of occupational need, when he makes a list of candidates for the emerging jobs, it is long, including everything from converted line workers, to journalists, reporters, editors, technical writers, as well as, yes, librarians—"The most intriguing new knowledge jobs, however, are knowledge integrators, librarians, synthesizers, reporters, and editors"1.

And it is here that we must confront the down side of the potentially invigorating up referred to by both Chase and Church. Not long after the WCH web page became recognized as an important corporate resource, new actors began to vie for its responsibility, from both within the institution and outside it. Pedigrees cannot play much of a role when a breed is only six months old. We have already seen a new breed of professional, the "webmaster" emerging, its ranks filled by professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds. In this case, the application has generated the profession. Let this be a lesson to any professional who hopes his or her pedigree will survive the new world intact. Worried for your future? Learn the new skills and applications in demand and to which you are inclined, wherever they may be available to learn, and let them be your guide. The strategic generalist, who combines "soft", cultural, skills and "hard", technical, ones may be the heir to the throne in these changing times, wherever he or she may be occupationally located at the moment. But it is the strategic generalist with the practical streak who will seize the moment. "Don't stand on the brink," exhort Davenport and Prusak, "get your toes into the water1". As for the relevant professional designations, these will be determined by the economic contracts continuously being forged between suppliers and users. Defining their central tendencies will be the task of another article.

REFERENCES

1. Davenport, Thomas H. and Prusak, Laurence. "Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know." Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Review, 1998.

2. Chase, Rory L. "Knowledge Navigators," Information Outlook 2 (9), Sept. 1998: 17-26.

3. Church, Doug. "Breaking Free of Reference Shackles," Information Outlook 3(3), March 1999: 18-20.

4. Duberman, Josh. "Reflections in a Fun House Mirror: Web Trends and Evolving Roles for Information Specialists," Searcher 7(2), February 1999. Available from the Internet: http://www.infotoday.com/feb/duberman.htm>.

5. Syracuse University. School of Information Studies. On-Campus and Distance Learning Programs 1998-99. Syracuse, NY: The University, 1998.

Taodhg Burns is project manager at Libra Information Services, Toronto. He can be reached at libra@web.net . Shahida Rashid is director of library services at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, Toronto. She may be reached at rashid@ftn.net .