If You Can Leverage a Taxonomy to Aid Findability …

If you can read this, thank a teacher.

This adage, usually attributed to former U.S. President Harry Truman, became popular on T-shirts and bumper stickers during the late 20th century. It has since spawned dozens of imitations—Walt Disney’s “If you can dream it, you can do it” is among the better known—but it remains one of the most recognized quotes in contemporary U.S. culture.

What if special librarians were to develop their own “If you can …” T-shirts or bumper stickers to highlight their impact on society? What might those T-shirts and bumper stickers say? Here are a few possibilities:

• If you can use citation databases to help your organization evaluate its research output, thank a special librarian.
• If you can promote data literacy within your organization, thank a special librarian.
• If you can use taxonomies to manage search capabilities within digital asset management systems, thank a special librarian.

These are just a few of the many things special librarians can do, and if you know how to do them, chances are you learned from a special librarian. Now it’s your turn to pay it forward—to share what you know with your peers who have gaps in their skill sets or want to position themselves for new roles.

SLA’s Pooled Resources Initiative is designed to “pool” the knowledge and expertise of special librarians and information professionals and make it available to others. So if you know how to tag or index content or develop a knowledge retention strategy, share your knowledge with your peers.

For more information, click here. Questions? Contact Juliane Schneider at juliane.schneider@gmail.com.

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