Best Practices
Looking Inward to Expand Library Services Outward
By changing the definition of the services special libraries
provide, librarians can help senior management leverage staff expertise while
demonstrating the value of their libraries to the firm – a worthy consideration
in these economic times.
By the Staff of SydneyPLUS International
Libraries are always looking for ways
to offer more services without increasing their workload, which often means
making more use of existing products and services. In fact, special libraries
have reported that librarians should market services that align themselves with
the essential needs of the parent organization, which has proven to be one of
the best ways to prevent downsizing and cost cutting during a recession. Where
could we find a new service that we could market to the organization, while
addressing the priorities of senior management? Special libraries should look
within for inspiration, because information about their own firms’ staff -
information more valuable than all of its books and journals combined - can be
found there. Special libraries can help achieve their firms’ business objectives
by providing senior management with the ability to identify such expertise.
Most special libraries have the
potential to offer a new service at little to no additional cost without
realizing it. The product of many libraries is access to organized information,
which is stored in the catalog in the form of books, journals, etc. Your library
may have already expanded the catalog to include a FAQ, competitive
intelligence, continuing education courses, etc. There are obviously many uses
for a catalog, in terms of providing access to information, that your parent
organization needs. The distinguishing factor for expanding into these areas is
the realization that your organization is already using other products and
services, other vendors, and may even have internal departments set up to manage
such information. Special libraries should compete to be the provider of these
other uses for information. Senior management, if we are successful, should be
left turning to the library as their first choice.
The thread that ties all these uses of
information together is people. Whether it is circulating a book to a borrower,
or conducting research on behalf of a patron, special libraries know a lot about
the most valuable resource in an organization – their staff. At a minimum, your
library probably has the name and contact information for the employees within
the organization. Many special libraries are set up to receive an import from HR
or IT departments to keep their borrower records current. Very few special
libraries have made any effort to make their borrower records available on their
intranets or internal portals.
While there is already a system in place for HR, these
systems are rigid and defined for their application, which is to support
payroll, medical benefits, and manage work performance. As librarians, we can
see a much bigger picture when we look to social networking sites, such as
LinkedIn and Facebook where individuals and organizations describe their
expertise to market their services outwardly. There is an equally strong demand
within any organization to know who the best person is for a particular job or
client, but this is usually left to an informal process, such as the judgment
call of a manager, which is more difficult in large organizations with many
offices spread out across other divisions, such as language, time zones, etc..
Some organizations will track experience, but this is usually a percentage or
total number of hours worked on a particular project or client, and it is often
a derivative of the HR system.
The opportunity for the library to make better use of its
borrower records is self-evident when we ask ourselves, “How valuable would it
be to senior management to have a means of searching for the best person in the
organization as easily as it is to search for a book?” At some organizations,
systems such as the “SydneyPLUS Staff Directory and Expertise Management System”
are already in use.
One such organization identified a need for a better calling
tree after noticing the amount of time the organization spent updating Microsoft
Excel spreadsheets, which listed all the staff responsible for calling each
other in the event of an emergency, or communicating a critical policy. By
modifying the same SydneyPLUS library system used to display books and journals,
they were able to represent their entire organization’s hierarchy in the library
portal, which allowed staff to navigate through the calling tree to see who was
responsible for calling them and who they had to call in turn. Depending on
their role within the organization, individuals may see more or less of the
calling tree. Where managers might see the entire hierarchy below them, an
individual staff person may only see the person or persons they are responsible
for calling.
Next, the library wanted to put a face next to each person.
Repurposing the SydneyPLUS modules for managing digital collections (i.e.
Digital Media Interface – DMI module and Thumbnails module), the library
inserted a staff photograph on each person’s borrower record (and SydneyPLUS
automatically displayed a thumbnail image on the portal), thereby creating the
first digital staff photograph gallery. The result of the staff gallery is the
ability for staff to recognize more people in the organization making it easier
to approach people and for new staff to get acquainted. Finally, the
organization applied some security to the borrower records to allow staff to
modify specific fields on their personal record while limiting what they could
view on other staff records. Staff are now able to update their own records with
their expertise.
Once in place, the application’s possibilities are endless,
for example: letting staff describe their hobbies, interests, languages spoken,
sports, countries visited, etc. The success story is that the library looked
within its own organization while mindful of industry trends and came up with an
additional service, using information already at its disposal to meet the needs
of senior management. If your library is cataloging books, journals, etc., then
why not try describing the most valuable resource in your company or
organization – the people?
Summary:
The most valuable resource in any organization is its staff,
but it is not always easy to find an expert among them for three reasons:
1. How do you make sure your system is describing all the
important facts about a person?
SydneyPLUS provides an interface that allows you to customize
the data entry form used for describing staff so you always have a place for
tracking a critical piece of data.
2. How do you design a search interface capable of finding an
expert, using any criteria?
SydneyPLUS lets the administrator set up a default search
interface, while allowing staff the ability to select their own interface. Staff
can select fields from a list they want to search and display.
3. How do you keep such a system updated?
The best approach is a combination of an internal policy
requiring staff to keep their profiles updated and a browser-based SydneyPLUS
data entry form that can be accessed anywhere.
Library Software Solutions:
The innovative solutions referred to in this article where
developed with SydneyPLUS’s Information Manager system.
Staff Directory: Expertise Management
Allows staff to update only their own profiles but not
others; an interface allows the administrator to choose what fields can be
modified.
Staff Directory: Calling Tree
A hierarchy showing staff structure in a "caller to callee"
relationship for the purposes of ensuring everyone is contacted in the event of
a disaster, etc.
SydneyPLUS is a leading global developer of knowledge
management solutions. Since 1977, we have partnered with many of the world's top
businesses including Fortune 1000 companies, law firms, pharmaceutical and
biotech companies, financial services firms and government agencies.
It is our mission to enable our clients to optimize knowledge
delivery while achieving their financial and organizational goals, and to help
ensure that information management is tied to business strategy. SydneyPLUS
International is available online at
www.sydneyplus.com.