Have you ever tried to find a document or image that you knew existed in your organisation, but you just couldn't get your hands on it? As an information professional, you have the skills to find what you need most of the time. But, for everyone else, the siloed information in organisations can make it nearly impossible to locate valuable content.
How can we, as information professionals, expand our horizons and think outside the box, utilising current skills and adding new ones that will allow us to expand our potential client base, enhance our career status in our current organisation by helping colleagues locate valuable content, or move to a new one?
As the Web and other self-service tools make our expertise seem less appealing to our users, we must move forward embracing new technologies and new roles or we could find ourselves out of work, outsourced or deemed obsolete.
Gaye Colvin summed it up nicely:
'From the neatly defined roles reflected in library school courses of the mid-70s to the thousands of job titles collected in the SLA's recent salary survey, we librarians or information professionals definitely aren't what we once were. If we play our KM or 'knowledge engineer' cards right, there are very few areas in any organisation in which we won't have significant contributions to make.'
‘Education for Changing Roles' by Gaye Colvin. Information Outlook, Oct/Nov 2009, p. 21.
What is enterprise content management (ECM)?
ECM is 'the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organisational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organisation's unstructured information, wherever that information exists' (http://www.aiim.org/).
ECM includes digital and print documents, files, images etc that our users, clients and we can reuse and repurpose to do our work so we don't reinvent the wheel every time we start a project, prepare a presentation or write a report. Money, time and effort are saved each time we can find and repurpose content. Valuable, actionable information that cannot be found results in recreating it which wastes valuable time, energy and resources.
Another rich, underused repository of invaluable information in every organisation is its intellectual capital, which is described in Wikipedia as:
Relational capital - all relations a company entertains with external subjects, such as suppliers, partners, clients (brands) and research centres. This is also known as contact management. Human capital - knowledge and competencies residing with the company's employees. Organisational capital - collective know-how, beyond the capabilities of individual employees. For example, information systems, policies and intellectual property.
Intellectual capital is what lives in people's brains. It may not be in any tangible form - written, illustrated or otherwise - but is inside someone's head from his/her experience and expertise. This used to mean, for me as an engineering information consultant and hospital librarian, hallway conversations between my users (engineers, architects and physicians) where they traded information, which was often outdated. I was continually reminding them of how that misinformation could lead to a failed highway bridge or botched surgery and the ensuing liability. I made it easy for them to get the information through me, which made sense then. But now, everyone wants to do his or her own research.
How do we connect our clients and users into the internal repository of information in the organisation in a way that serves them and the organisation well? We need to make it easy and fast and engage our clients on their terms and add value where we can. Do we have a very visible Web and other online presence? Are we the innovators in our organisations implementing, modelling and testing Web and enterprise 2.0 tools?
With data growth and proliferation ongoing, organisations have two choices: maintain the status quo and hope employees can find relevant information when they need to; or learn from what the Internet has taught us and leverage search technology to connect workers with information and the knowledge to do their work.
Where do information professionals fit into this?
Most organisations do not have an ECM programme in place. Staff have less control over their documents and intellectual capital which means they are spinning their wheels more. We can help! In fact, many of us are already doing ECM, but we don't call it that.
Information professionals with an MLS/MLIS qualification have skills that can be adapted and applied in a way that may not have occurred to them - to help organisations that are desperate to find their information assets (paper, digital, knowledge) in information overload reality. This is a career opportunity for us - in the jobs we have now, in our next jobs, or as consultants.
Information and knowledge professionals are an asset in an organisation and more power can come to them if they leverage their expertise, propose an ECM initiative and get senior executive ('C' suite) support so that cross-organisational buy-in can follow. (Grass roots is good, but funding comes from the top down.)
We need to be comfortable that we add value, probably in ways new to us. We are probably working with millennials and others for whom texting and social networking are the major ways they communicate. This may not be true of all our current and potential users and clients, but we need to be agile enough to live in the print, digital and virtual worlds. This doesn't mean being an expert, but knowing enough to speak intelligently about Web and enterprise 2.0 tools and how to leverage them for knowledge management.
'We must find a way to involve ourselves in projects, products and plans that not only ensure our continued employment, but also have an effect on the bottom line [and] have maximum impact on the organisation. [We must] effectively align ourselves with the primary objectives of our organisation.' 'Reinventing ourselves for success' by Jamal Cromity and Barry Miller. Information Outlook, Dec. 2009, p. 29.
We need to be part of the solution in our organisations, not part of the overhead.
Remember that lifelong learning and professional and personal growth are the road to success and self-fulfillment. We cannot wish for the past because it is gone. To survive and thrive in the current and future information environment, we must move forward and not look backward. Here's a quick exercise you can do to start the process of moving forward:
Write down the skills you already have in your toolbox that you can use to begin ECM in your organization, include on your resume or in a cover letter. Write a quick action plan of what you'll do, and by when, to add to your skillset.
Moving ahead:
get a clear idea about what you want and why you want it
imagine it
commit to doing it and make a choice to move forward in a particular area
don't fall into the trap of ‘I'm too busy'. It will tune out possibilities and inspiration.
ask for what you want and then see it through
learn from the past, but look to the future and move in that direction.
So go ahead, jump into the future. You will find career satisfaction, increase your marketability and become the ECM guru in your organisation.
Learn more:
Mining Enterprise Business Intelligence --All the World's a Stage: Another Role for Info Pros: http://digbig.com/5bbhsc
Deb is Principal of Information Edge which enables clients to find the information they need to do their work. Information Edge specialises in enterprise content management, knowledge services, professional research, and library creation and automation. Deb has presented at many conferences including CENIC (Corporation for Education Networks in California), SLA, the California Library Association, Internet@Schools, Internet Librarian and AIIP.
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Have you ever tried to find a document or image that you knew existed in your organisation, but you just couldn't get your hands on it? As an information professional, you have the skills to find what you need most of the time. But, for everyone else, the siloed information in organisations can make it nearly impossible to locate valuable content.
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