This is the fourth post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. The same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals—no matter the organization size, sector or geography. Please read on for our thoughts on the fourth most pressing issue special librarians are facing today—lack of integration with other critical systems.

As part of its new mobile-first strategy, Google will give preferential search rankings to mobile-friendly sites (sites optimized for mobile devices). This change will have a significant impact on search results. Librarians and knowledge managers who make content available to the public, external researchers, funders, et al., through an organizational website must take this into consideration.

We’re always trying to enhance our software to make it easier to navigate. Recently, we introduced a new menu system in SydneyEnterprise, GeniePlus, and Argus. It makes great use of “screen real estate” while giving you lots of choices, and personalization via “Favorites.”

This is the third post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. (You can find the first post here and the second post here.) We observe that the same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals—no matter the organization size, sector or geography. Please read on for our thoughts on the third most pressing issue special librarians are facing today—permissions management.

This is the second post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. We observe that the same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals—no matter the organization size, sector or geography. Please read on for our thoughts on the second most prevalent opportunity for special library growth.

Self-promotion can be difficult, but sharing your library’s successes with senior management and your peers is critical. Remember the age-old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, did it make a sound?” Communicating the value of your department’s content and services by publicizing your successes is something you must regularly do, so that the message is loud and clear.

During our conversations with clients, prospective clients and information management professionals across the globe, we observe that the same six challenges to library success and sustainability keep surfacing, no matter the organization size, sector or geography. In this blog post series, we’ll explore these challenges one by one.

Generation Z is the cohort that follows Millennials; the starting birth date for this generation is the mid-90s. Their presence and influence in your workplace is going to grow, and they have very specific expectations with regard to information access and knowledge exchange. Get ready for them now.

I’m reading a wonderful book at the moment, called “The Little Paris Bookshop,” by Nina George. In it, one of the characters says, “The others all left with the riddle unsolved; none of them asked the right questions. Asking questions is an art.” In my experience, that is very true …and the ability to practice that art in support of a patron’s or user’s needs is a librarian’s secret weapon.

As the writer Horace Walpole observed of the Three Princes of Serendip, “they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of…” and these discoveries actually saved their lives. Users of your ILS/KM solution may find it to be a lifesaver—if it enables true discovery; that is, if it enables finding, not just searching.

Could you lose your job to a robot? In an earlier post, I wrote about 10 Ways to Foil a Robot, which I hope was inspiring and optimistic. In reality, artificial intelligence is yet another tool for knowledge professionals—an arrow in the quiver.

This is the third in a series of posts on IT and the information Professional. When I chat with information professionals and IT managers about open source software, they often talk about two key concepts:

• It’s free
• Bug fixes and enhancements come from the community

While both of these statements are true, they fail to paint the whole picture and hide some pretty ugly truths.