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InfoPro Home > Professional Development > Monthly Column
Transform Information into Powerful Knowledge
By
Matthew Wagner,
Librarian Relations Consultant
What would you rather be on the receiving end of?
- A stack of dozens of documents that has relevant yet poorly organized information
- A notebook with the same information organized by category with tabs and a table of contents and an index.
I’ll bet you most of us would like to be the recipient of Option B. With that choice in mind, think about how you and or your library staff deliver information to users.
Often in the quest to get our patrons the information they need, we can often fail to provide with knowledge that they can use. By taking just a little bit of extra time, I believe you can enhance the value of the service you provide by taking some additional finishing steps that will benefit your users and reaffirm the value of the information professional to your organization.
Below are just a few examples of where you can add value to common reference/research requests and recurring tasks/projects.
1) Literature Searches
Instead of just handing the requestor a stack of pertinent articles, how about creating a Table of Contents as a cover sheet? This simple enhancement to a literature search requires very little time and effort on your part, but will provide the recipient with a preview of what is contained in the information you have provided, and enable them to easily navigate to the items of most interest.
Most word processing applications will create a Table of Contents for you automatically, if you have downloaded the articles from an online service into the application. Prior to arranging the articles, you may want to sort them by date order or by some other criteria that you ascertained through your reference interview.
If you have flexibility on the turnaround time you may want to consider writing abstracts for each article.
2) Executive Biographies & Company Profiles
Assembling a comprehensive executive biography or company information usually requires consulting several different sources. The end result can often yield a stack of paper which includes photocopies from print directories, as well as copies of documents from online services. Instead of simply redistributing that stack of information to the requestor, comb through it and create a two- to five-page document that summarizes all the information you have found.
For example, for an executive biography you may want to create categories of information, i.e. Personal Information (date of birth, name of spouse, education), Employment History, Board Memberships, etc. You should consider doing the same for company profiles. Categories might include Business Description, Primary SIC Codes, Financial Information, Competitors, etc. You may want to consider creating a template for these types of requests so that you and other members of the library staff don’t have reduplicate the process each time. Additionally you can also use your template as a checklist during the reference interview and then customize what you provide to each requestor.
Don’t discard that collection of documents that you used to create those biographies and profiles. If you think they might be of interest to the requestor, simply include them as an appendix. By delivering a comprehensive and organized report rather than the proverbial “data dump,” you’ve provided your requestor with a knowledge resource that they can use and also easily share with others.
Additionally, if you are looking to provide this type of value-added service, but are struggling with a tight deadline, you may want to consider using the LexisNexis® Dossier and/or Analyzer report products. Your Librarian Relations Consultant can provide you information about both of these if you are not familiar with these tools.
3) Client/Practice Current Awareness
Do you assist with the tracking news about your firm’s clients and/or practice areas? If so, you may be doing this through a variety of methods including: routing periodicals, LexisNexis® Alerts, Web monitoring tools, etc.
Consider developing an email newsletter(s) where you summarize the information contained in all these materials, and also offer applicable hyperlinks to the full-text. Depending on the needs of your organization, as well the library’s workload, this can be done as often as daily, or as infrequent as quarterly. By creating an electronic newsletter you’ll turn all that information coming from a variety of sources into something practical and far more “digestible.”
You can add additional value by setting up email distribution lists or posting the newsletters to your intranet. You may also find LexisNexis® Publisher a valuable asset in helping you accomplish this type of initiative. Again, see your Librarian Relations Consultant for additional information on this product.
The aforementioned are just a few ideas for making information more powerful in your organization. If you can aid in helping your users be better informed in a more efficient manner, you’ll ensure that the library continues to play both a critical and effective part in your organization.
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