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Written by Tim Buckley Owen

There isn't an information professional in the world these days who doesn't have to demonstrate that they add value. But media librarians - the folk who work for news organisations, publications and broadcasters - probably need to try harder than most.

Media work is about staying competitive through creating compelling content that people will really want to read - accurately reported, fairly evaluated and, above all, delivered fast. Currently it faces challenges from all quarters - free newspapers, blogging, and fragmentation of advertising revenue which means that everyone's share of the cake is smaller.

The media information professionals who deal in public domain information have to work in partnership with the journalists who hunt down the stuff that's not yet public knowledge, the stuff that someone probably doesn't want published. Everyone working in media has to earn their keep; there's no room for passengers.

Must try harder

So it's no surprise that this year's conference of the Association of UK Media Librarians is all about adding value. Libby Gregory of television production company Shine Limited will talk about adding value to independent television production, while David McMenemy of Strathclyde University will confront some of the ethical issues information professionals face in their work - adding 'values', as opposed to 'value'.

In technical presentations, Torsten de Riese of the Guardian newspaper reviews the digitisation of the Guardian's archive, and Sarah MacDonald of Getty Images looks at managing and exploiting stills collections - and there's also a visit to the North West Film Archive. However strongly media organisations compete for stories and audiences in the marketplace, there's an atmosphere of co-operation when it comes to sharing best practice and technical expertise.

Surrounded, no doubt, by hordes of Google-fixated journos, media librarians need to be searchers of uncommon skill and ingenuity - so veteran internet specialist Karen Blakeman provides a first hand update on search tools. And, with an eye on how to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive employment market, Jenny Rowley of Manchester Metropolitan University offers advice on how to explore your own leadership potential.

News gathering has changed unimaginably since 1982 when the BBC's Brian Hanrahan reported that he had counted all the aircraft in the first raid on the occupied Falkland Islands out and counted them all back again. So the concluding high point of AUKML's gathering is an informal talk on Sunday morning at which delegates can discuss with Mr Hanrahan the requirements of the 21st century newsroom.

Perhaps with an eye to Hanrahan's journalistic CV, there's also an opportunity to visit the Imperial War Museum North, with its multimedia displays on how lives are shaped by war and conflict. And if the conflict isn't over territory or ideology, chances are that it's industrial; 'trouble at t'mill' is an iconic (if stereotypical) expression of Britain's economic heritage, manifested at this conference by a drinks reception at Manchester's Museum of Science & Industry.

Creative corner cutting

I've always had a special regard for library & information professionals who work in the media. They need to combine the meticulous attention to detail that any librarian has to deploy with the urgency, the creativity and the frequent need to cut corners that is the life of the journalist.

Unless they succeed on both counts they're unlikely to survive, and it must take very special type of professional who's prepared to make a go of it. Which is one of the reasons why I'm especially flattered to have been asked by AUKML to deliver this year's opening conference keynote.

The other reason I'm flattered is because the presentation is in honour of my much missed friend the late Justin Arundale. More about him anon.

I'm conscious of following in the footsteps of a truly distinguished bunch of previous deliverers of the Justin Arundale Memorial Lecture. They include another friend, Professor Charles Oppenheim of Loughborough University, to whom went the honour of giving the first lecture, in 2003.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Charles may have taken his audience aback somewhat by weighing into AUKML itself, fearing that it might lack a clear vision of where it was heading. But life in the media is all about giving criticism a fair hearing and then rebutting it vigorously, so I've no doubt that AUKML members and delegates took it in their stride.

No less forthright, I suspect, was Judith Dunn, head of group publishing services at News International, who delivered the 2005 lecture. If media librarians didn't exist we would have to invent them, she acknowledged. Thank goodness for that.

But then she threw out a challenge: Someone has to manage a media organisation's output, she is reported to have said. Who is doing it in your organisation and why isn't it you?

In 2006 it was the turn of Ian Watson of the Glasgow-based Herald and Evening Times (and the chair of this year's Manchester conference, incidentally). Dependency, disintermediation and integration was his theme, reflecting how the profession had had to change to ensure that it continued to add value.

That phrase again: adding value. We can't afford to stop doing it, ever.

As the theme of Ian Watson's lecture implies, we haven't been able to rely on our role as monopolistic custodians of our organisation's recorded memory for the best part of a decade now. We've also found it increasingly difficult to claim that searching requires any kind of special expertise, now everyone knows that the entire history of everything that's ever happened can be retrieved instantly by simply typing the magic words 'Google.com'.

Information professionals are operating in a world where millions of self-publishers push out screeds of stuff, most of it adding only a tiny percentage of value to the raw intelligence on which it was based. Finding the nugget that is going to be of genuine value to the communicators we support becomes ever more challenging.

Losing it

I treasure the last time I ever saw Justin Arundale; we were both at a loose end at a conference in Glasgow one evening, so arranged to have dinner together. Time spent with Justin never failed to be stimulating - but so immense was his knowledge and so acute his perception that it could be a little daunting too.

I needn't have worried; he was on top form and the conversation ranged over every imaginable topic - fortunately with his own topics skilfully selected and mine equally skilfully parried so I could keep up with him. Weeks later, he was dead.

I remember him telling me that, when he was at the Independent newspaper, he would be asked from time to time to 'lose' some sensitive document or other in the library as part of the paper's strategy of avoiding being gagged when it had an important story to tell that people needed to hear, however unpalatable to the establishment. Anyone who ever saw any of Justin's offices might well think that losing documents was probably his forte - but it set me thinking that here was a role that 21st century media information professionals could well embrace.

In contrast to many of the private secrets that people harbour - concealing adulterous affairs, caching the proceeds of crime - state and corporate secrets are in fact matters of record. They can be unearthed through leaks, blogging, use of the Freedom of Information Act.

Where they are in the public interest, private secrets are the journalist's proper stock in trade. But when it comes to public ones - manifestations of the Secret State - this is surely an activity to which the skills of media information professionals can add significant value.

Despite the best efforts of our law makers to emasculate it, the Freedom of Information Act is turning into a powerful weapon in the public interest. Surely the most useful people to learn its intricacies and exploit its full potential in support of journalistic leg and phone work are the media information professionals.

By the same token, business can no longer be confident of covering up its misdeeds and presenting a well spun message of reassurance to a dispersed and unorganised consumer community. Global publishing capability now lies in anyone's hands; abuses can be exposed and consumers can end up with a more powerful voice than that of corporate PR - because consumers are more likely to occupy the moral high ground.

But a little bit of help from the established media to make their voices better heard never comes amiss - and again, a diligent information professional keeping a close eye on the blogosphere can tip the wink to the journalists who can use their skills to turn individual injustices into issues of public interest.

So am I going to try to instruct my audience of experienced media information grandmothers how to extract the embryo juices of the bird by suction? Absolutely not. But I am relishing the opportunity of putting the proposition to them and seeing what happens.

AUKML's conference is at the Palace Hotel, Manchester, from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 April - details at http://www.aukml.org.uk/conf2008.htm.

Tim is an independent information industry commentator. His career has encompassed information management, writing, editing, training, government policy advice and corporate media & marketing.

Tim did his information apprenticeship in London's City Business Library, and then set up the London Research Centre's business information service. Meanwhile he also edited the City Information Group's newsletter CIGlet, wrote regularly for Information World Review and for the Market Research Society's Research magazine, and edited Business Information Review.

Later he became head of policy & communications at the Library & Information Commission (subsequently absorbed into the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council) and finally head of membership, marketing & media at CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals.

Tim went fully independent in 2006.  Besides contributing to Freepint's FUMSI and VIP, he also writes for Library & Information Gazette and Managing Information, and runs training courses covering a range of value-added information skills.

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