My first job was at Data Resources Inc. (DRI) working as a consultant with a large Fortune 25 conglomerate. My role was to provide industry information and sales forecasting via timesharing to its various business units by building a model that the customer would run (ideally) for years to come. Whenever the customer ran the model, DRI generated revenue. Sounds great, right? But I learned a difficult lesson about how things really work.

In his upcoming book on promoting KM initiatives within the corporate world, author and KM expert Stan Garfield shares a number of useful KM methodologies that enable colleagues to take advantage of proven practices and see the value of knowledge management to the organization. Read on for a sneak preview.

This is the sixth and final post in our series about the 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 sixth most pressing issue special librarians are facing today—the perception that all ILS options are too costly, and still generic.

If you are planning to buy an ILS, or want to migrate/upgrade, you need to think about your organization’s needs both strategically and tactically in order to select the right platform. Here are 10 questions to ask yourself that will help.

This is the fifth post in our series about the six major challenges to library success. No matter the organization size, sector or geography, the same challenges to sustainability keep surfacing during our conversations with information management professionals. Please read on for our thoughts on the fifth most pressing issue special librarians are facing today—dependence on the IT department, or on costly vendor services.

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.

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.

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.

We recently offered a webinar presented by museum evangelist and strategist Nina Simon, where she drew upon research for her book, The Art of Relevance, and offered substantive, creative, inspiring and practical advice on how to increase your organization’s relevance to the communities you hope to engage. Interestingly, in Nina’s role as speaker, she offers advice that applies whether you work in a library, a museum, a theater, a park, an academic institution or a corporation. It’s all relevant.