T HE A GILE L IBRARIAN S G UIDE TO T HRIVING IN A NY I NSTITUTION LASL Midwinter Conference LSU...
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Transcript of T HE A GILE L IBRARIAN S G UIDE TO T HRIVING IN A NY I NSTITUTION LASL Midwinter Conference LSU...
THE AGILE LIBRARIAN’S GUIDE TO THRIVING IN ANY
INSTITUTION
LASL Midwinter Conference
LSU Alexandria
January 30, 2010
Michelynn McKnight, PhD, AHIP
School of Library and Information Science
Louisiana State University
BASED ON
“Proving Your Worth:
Using Professional, Business, and Marketing
Tools to Convince Non-Librarian Decision
Makers of the Value of your Essential
Services”
1. Know your value to your organization
2. Delight your clients
3. Expand your political influence
4. Please your boss
5. Impress decision makers
6. Choose an instantly credible professional image
7. Ensure positive communication
8. Marketing, advertising and public relations
9. Gathering and using evidence to support decisions
10. Behaving ethically
11. Sustaining your green and growing career
PROFESSIONALS
Know Show
Tell
1. YOUR VALUE TO YOUR SCHOOL
Your specialized expertise Determining needs and desires Knowledge of information sources Connecting needs and sources
Your professionalism Professional association, education, theoretical
and practical knowledge, code of ethics, service orientation, community recognition
Your role in the school’s mission Know how the school needs you Show how it needs you Tell the decision makers
SEVEN MARKS OF A PROFESSIONMICHAEL WINTER
Professional Association
Licensing or credentialing
Ethics Code Formal Training
Legitimate monopoly over a body of knowledge
Service Orientation Community
Recognition
2. DELIGHT YOUR CLIENTS
Who are your clients? Expand your clientele
Take action: the onus is on us
What do clients need and want
Population information needs
Individual information needs
Remove barriers to client delight … including old rules
Traditions and habits: gateways or barriers?
Ambience and attitude
3. EXPANDING YOUR INFLUENCE Effective organizational politics
Understand the system Know when to hold and when to fold Believe in Win-Win Situations Play Fair Think first, act later
Lessons from the pros in government Get and use good information sources Show up, speak up Come prepared Engage and balance responses Constantly build positive alliances and
relationships Building positive political capital Advocacy outside the institution
4. PLEASING YOUR BOSS
Allies, mentors and mentees
What does the boss want? What does the boss need?
Leadership and management styles
Training, educating and “sharing with” the boss
Reference and updates services
Informing the boss The good The bad The inconvenient
truth
Understanding roles and perspectives
Information services for the boss
5. IMPRESSING DECISION MAKERS
Who are these decision makers? Why are their understanding and experiences
of library services important? What are stakeholder concerns? Actions that impress
Active and personal direct information services General visibility Stakeholders’ reports Your reports
6. AN INSTANTLY CREDIBLE PROFESSIONAL IMAGE
The big study
Improving our image to increase our credibility Color attracts Dress for your clients Neatness counts That sounds good! That tastes good! You don’t look like a librarian
7. POSITIVE COMMUNICATION (SLIDE 1)
Welcome
Personal welcome
Save the client’s time
Where is it?
Negative actions
Verbal messages: from negative to positive
What to say
Scripts and the magic eraser word
What to write
7. POSITIVE COMMUNICATION (SLIDE 2)
Complaints as reference questions in disguise
Stages of the complaint interview
Stage One – open a communication channel
Stage Two – gather information to frame the larger context of the problem
Stage Three – work together to define and refine the central problem
Stage Four – search for information, answers or solutions
Stage Five – communicate, evaluate and invite
7. POSITIVE COMMUNICATION (SLIDE 3)
Acting professionally when feelings are intense
Common ground and innovative, mutually beneficial solutions
Resulting promotions and innovations
Prioritizing your own complaints
When you should complain
8. MARKETING, ADVERTISING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
The right people Market
segmentation Relationship
marketing The right product The right promotion The right point in
time The right place
What evidence would answer the question
Gathering and analyzing data
Drawing conclusions Taking action Asking another
question
Real MarketingMarketing research: finding the right “P”
Ask, Study, Act, Ask: Comparing the stages of marketing, QI and EBLwith Reference Service (©Michelynn McKnight)
ASKDefine the Question
STUDYEstimate where the answer may be found
STUDYChoose a method for finding out
STUDYGather the data
STUDY, ACTAnalyze the results
ACT, ASKPropose questions for further study
Reference Service(satisfying one person)
Conduct a reference interview to understand the question
Consider possible sources for the answer
Consult the sources
Retrieve documents
Choose relevant documents
Deliver to client and ask client if this completely answers the question
Marketing(satisfying a group of users or potential users)
What is the service?
What is the population of users or clients for this service?
Design a study to find out what the users or clients want and need from the service.
Carry out the study
Analyze the results Design, promote, implement and evaluate service improvements.
Quality Improvement(improving internal processes)
Find a process to improve
Who should be on the team to improve this process?
Gather data on the current process and identify the desired improvement
Plan and implement the process change
Gather data on the process after the change and compare to the before change data
Evaluate the effectiveness of the improvement and suggest the next process to improve
Evidence Based Librarianship(searching and applying the results of relevant published research) [1]
“Formulate a clearly defined, answerable question that addresses an important issue in librarianship”
“Search the published and unpublished literature, plus any other authoritative resources for the best-available evidence with relevance to the posed question.”
“Evaluate the validity (closeness to the truth) and relevance of the evidence”
Formulate an action plan based on the evidence; “Assess the relative value of expected benefits and costs.”
Implement a plan of action
“Evaluate the effectiveness of the action plan”
9. GATHERING AND USING EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT
DECISIONS
Research Librarians and research education Research and professional associations
Evidence based librarianship Assessment and measurement of quality and
value Standards Benchmarking
Evidence of client satisfaction Value evidence for top administrative
decision makers
10. BEHAVING ETHICALLY
Responsibility for the provision of the best possible information service
Respect for others, protection of privacy and preservation of confidentiality
Promotion of equitable information access while respecting intellectual property rights and the institutional mission
Professional development of the self and others
Advocacy for library services and information access in society
11. YOUR GREEN AND GROWING CAREER
Your own missions Setting priorities
Urgency and importance Perfect or good enough Tools
Scheduling Make appointments not only with others but also
with yourself One list is never enough
Risk taking and reward: dare to be proactive Keep starting again
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (1981) STRENGTH TO LOVE. (REPRINT OF 1977 EDITION, CLEVELAND, OHIO: COLLINS) PHILADELPHIA: FORTRESS PRESS, PAGE 93
“Some of us, of course, will die without having received the realization of freedom, but we must continue to sail on our charted course. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.”
THE AGILE LIBRARIAN’S GUIDE TO THRIVING IN ANY
INSTITUTION
LASL Midwinter Conference
LSU Alexandria
January 30, 2010
Michelynn McKnight, PhD, AHIP
School of Library and Information Science
Louisiana State University