We’ve all suffered through slick, packaged PowerPoint presentations that offer few glimpses of the actual software product. Seldom do we really get to see what we’re interested in. Here is a fool proof strategy to get potential vendors to actually show you how their products can help you achieve your goals.

One of the many positive aspects of solo librarianship is the diversity of the practitioners. Among them are law librarians, medical librarians, corporate/special librarians and archivists, to name just a few. This diversity helps solo librarians to better help one another, solving common problems and sharing/implementing best practices.

Over the past few years we have heard a lot about the special role of elevator speeches—those sound bites you practice in case you have the ear of a key decision maker or influencer in your organization for a few floors. I love this tactic, but let’s remember that it’s just a micro-skill and we can’t leave our communication strategies up to chance encounters. Let’s learn how to make our own magical moments.

Our first three posts defined customer engagement and focused on our clients/colleagues. We suggested a strategy for identifying and connecting with the colleagues we serve. We looked into gaining a better understanding of ourselves as people, and we reviewed the core skills for listening. In this post we design a roadmap for engaging colleagues in the various specialized settings of information professionals.

Frequent travelers through San Francisco’s airport who love to read have probably stopped in at Compass Books in Terminal 3. The quality and range of their selection always impresses me, as do the knowledgeable staff. Recently, when SFO underwent significant renovations, I feared the store had closed—another victim of the digital age.

In our first two posts in this series, we defined what customer engagement is in the special librarian’s context, and outlined an approach to building a special library focused customer relationship management system.

Now, let’s ask ourselves what are the major competencies required for success? What should we invest our personal development focus on?

My last post defined terms related to customer engagement and focused on the personal relationship-building component of our mandate with our target colleagues.

A major element of building relationships is knowing your colleagues well. No one’s memory is perfect. You can’t remember everything, and you may be working in teams (although this is useful for solos too). For sustainability and teamwork, you need to build a database that pulls together your knowledge of your clients and colleagues.

This series of blog posts on client engagement is inspired by a reader comment. Thanks!

“I appreciate Stephen Abram's tips. Could you talk more of 'engagement'? How can special librarians 'engage' employees? THANK YOU!”

This reader comment has inspired me to think more deeply about how special librarians and information professionals need to behave differently on the customer engagement front. Yes, special librarians are different!

There will, no doubt, be certain jobs and industries that will be dramatically impacted by artificial intelligence (AI). However, that can be said about virtually any technological innovation introduced in the past 30 years. A more interesting question might be, “How does the hype surrounding AI affect my career today?”

We have all been there, and I’ve been there a lot. In the not too distant past, I was required to use an IBM mainframe to do my “word processing” when PC based solutions had far better functionality. Later, I was required to use email software that wasn’t compatible with the internet. The list goes on, and the problem still exists. There is hope: please read on for some ideas on how to break away from legacy software.

In a recent post, The CKO of Microsoft Services Has a Surprising Perspective on Knowledge Management, KM blogger Nancy Dixon summarizes a conversation about people, process and technology with Jean Claude Monney, CKO of Microsoft Services. Mr. Monney touches on “no collar” workers, who should be added to “white collar” and “blue collar” when we talk about the people side of knowledge exchange.

In his “Knoco Story,” Dealing with the Important Urgent Knowledge First, KM expert Nick Milton discusses the difference between important and urgent information and knowledge. Understanding this difference is key for special librarians and other knowledge professionals as they manage workflow and resources to best support their end users and deliver the most impact.

As information professionals we are often asked to give our advice and our professional opinion on a number of issues and projects. Sometimes it is difficult to offer guidance confidently, yet it is our obligation to do so. In this post I’ll offer my thoughts on why and how to begin.

Well, we’re finally at part three of this series. Here are my final ten tips and a bonus one. (Check out part one and part two here, in case you missed them.)

I wrote my first 12 tips for innovation and product development success at your library based on my own experiences (and as a sort of ode to my 39th anniversary of my MLS graduation). This is a three part series and the next 11 tips are right here. Watch for the final batch in my next post.

There’s nothing like the 39th anniversary of your library school graduation to cause you to reflect. I have many memories of a young, newly minted, newly married and very green librarian heading out into the big world. Ironically, my first task in those pre-Amazon days was to order a book—and I didn’t know how and was a solo librarian. Learning started fast in professional practice. What have I learned in the last 39 years, and is any of it useful?

“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” The origin of this quote is unclear, but it is often cited in the education sector during discussions about how best to motivate students and improve teaching skills. The concept is equally relevant to customer service, and therefore applies to librarians and other information professionals.

Librarians are more relevant than ever. We have no good reason to be on the defense and every reason to take the offensive. Conversation in our field is fraught with too much navel gazing and not enough looking at external evidence that many things are going well. We share too many stories about the bad stuff and too rarely share the successes. Yet we are an adaptive profession. Positive change is our tradition; let’s talk about that!