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Volume 12 No. 6 • September 1998

On the Path Toward a Proactive Library by Allyson N. Nolan

Going beyond the minimum level and visualizing the steps from idea to actualization is one of the capabilities of the entrepreneur. Vision and action have to be combined in order to make things happen.

— Donald E. Riggs, 1989

The U.S. Army Soldier Systems Command (SSCOM) Technical Library's mission is to support all research, development, and engineering activities by employing all information resources available. The overall mission of the command is to research, develop, and engineer state-of-the-art items used by soldiers during war and peacetime. This includes items such as tents, backpacks, clothing engineered for all environments, mobile units for facilities and food service, and Meals Ready to Eat (MRE). Researchers investigate the possible biological, psychological, and medical situations that soldiers might encounter during their assignments.

To successfully support SSCOM's missions, the Technical Library's collection must reflect its varying needs. In order to amply cover the expanse of our topics, the library would have to subscribe to journals costing more than $500,000 per year. Updating the reference and monograph collection would be an additional $250,000. Unfortunately, this is not possible and will not even be considered as an option.

Many libraries, whether special, corporate, private, or public, are facing a similar scenario: "Do more with less and less and less." I decided to take this situation and change it to the library's benefit. I feel that if we information professionals do not make the first move to change our own situations, they will be changed for us by people who have no idea how libraries are managed. So before someone who does not even care about our work is asked to cut funds for us, we'd better become entrepreneurs and do it ourselves. Let's face it: By the time we educate the finance and management people so they understand the methodology and theory of why libraries function the way they do, we may be closed.

Envisioning transition is difficult. Just as a work of art is seldom completed in an afternoon, neither is a library reinvented in a day.

Starting Down the Path

This article will provide you with specific steps toward innovation. The best part about it is that it fits the librarian lifestyle: You'll be able to read a section, then put the article down to do something else, then pick it up again later.

These ideas are very general, so most individual libraries will be able to apply them to their own situations. Not all parts will work for all libraries, but it's a start. The aim of this article is to guide you through the process that we used here at SSCOM's Technical Library to take control and to change the library's future to reflect a proactive environment for the staff and customers.

There are a few terms that you should keep in mind while reading this. I like to call them "50-cent words"—Reengineering, Reinvention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurial. All four of these terms are associated with change. They may not always indicate a totally new change; sometimes they may just mean looking into an old bag to find a new trick.

These ideas will involve using some money, so be prepared to make a presentation on the benefits of an investment, because you will need to get some backing from users and management.

Step 1: Benchmarking Your Library for Services and Functions

When reengineering current end-user services, begin with benchmarking. Evaluate the services that are now available to the users and answer these questions:

• Do the current services fit the users' needs?
• Do the current services provide the necessary information to the customers?
• How many library resources does the customer need to research before getting the answer?
• Are you (as the information professional) getting frustrated with the resources available in your library? If you are frustrated, think of how frustrated the researcher must be.

Step 2: Developing a Team of Professionals and Customers

At SSCOM, we developed a team to redefine the library's role as positive and proactive. One thing we did was to list services and note how much time we spent on each task. It was important to brainstorm to focus on what services are essential and which of the top essential services needed the most attention. Some of the topics we addressed were:

• What are the directives, mission, and vision of the library team?
• What needs to be changed for our current Library Users Council (LUC) to become a Library Process Action Team (L-PAT)?
• What would the impact be if the customers lost a service?
• Is there a set funding structure for the library or can we reallocate funds to meet changing customer needs? (How our funds were spent had not changed in 20 years, so the funding allocation was a starting point for reinvention and innovation for us.)
• Can monograph funds be used to pay for journals or electronic resources?

Step 3: Changing the Environment

Your physical environment should entice users; this offers an extra marketing advantage. Make sure your library is an inviting place.

• Do the users have comfortable places to sit and read?
• Do the online terminals have sufficient lighting and ergonomically designed work areas?
• Is there a place set aside for group research and discussion?
• What type of multimedia access is available to customers and staff?
• Are there facilities for end-user education?

Step 4: Implementing a Plan for an Integrated Library System

If you don't already have an electronic system that allows information to be delivered to the users' desktops, you should think about getting one. It's not a simple task, but it will add value to your services!

• Will you have an in-house designer or contractors design the library system? Or will you buy an off-the-shelf product?
• What system will best meet the growing needs of the organization?
• Do you need Internet access (with accessible Web page) or intranet (in-house only) access to the collection?
• How much funding is required?
• Where do you plan to get the funding?

Step 5: Marketing to Outsiders

Here is one example of how we changed our thinking: Instead of concentrating on what we did not have, we looked at what we did have that others would pay money to get. A library is traditionally high maintenance. As a support function, it is seen as a possible target for cutting costs. A library is also essential, particularly if research is involved in the organization's mission. Many small companies cannot afford libraries and find that their researchers are traveling around attempting to find satisfactory research libraries in which to do their work. We developed a marketing plan between the L-PAT and the library staff to try to sell some services to outsiders to subsidize our costs and to become increasingly self-sufficient.

You Must Take Many Steps Before You Reach the End of the Path

There are many milestones that you'll need to reach before these plans can fully come together:

• Develop and present a proposal to management to confirm their cooperation.
• Involve legal counsel to look at legal considerations and contracts.
• Develop a marketing presentation for outside businesses.
• Establish target customers for your different services.
• Construct a boilerplate Statement of Work, which can be customized depending on the services required by the customer.
• Develop an internal marketing demonstration with an attractive package that will complete the picture of a world-class research library.

Being an innovator is not limited to managers, team leaders, and supervisors. A risk-taker is any individual who takes a current situation that is producing marginal results and envisions a better alternative. For example, I didn't wait until I became the director here before I started enacting change. During the time I spent as a reference librarian, I instituted the use of OCLC's FirstSearch as an end-user-searching tool. It was a system that enabled the users to search at their desktops, and it was new for U.S. Army Soldier Systems Command, Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center, and equally new to OCLC. As FirstSearch grew, so did Technical Library's usage figures, end-user services, and general library use. The only thing that decreased was the amount spent on other search engines that were used for more sophisticated searches. In its beginnings, FirstSearch was continually improving, which enabled our library to offer more services, such as searching economically, ordering full-text articles, verifying interlibrary loan requests, and using FirstSearch ILL Link. The ILL Link saved verification time, eliminated paperwork for customers, and gave the library staff time to process additional requests.

The lesson here is this: As soon as people say, "It can't be done," they have already put themselves in the back of the pack. In order to be part of the team, contributing ideas and driving your own career, you need to be in the front of the pack. In the back, you're depriving yourself the panoramic view of what is available and the possible bumps, turns, and milestones ahead. If you are leading and take a wrong fork, don't worry—the library team (if they are doing their job) will not let you go too far before putting you back on the right path. The team is the check-and-balance part of the system in any sound decision-making process.

To further assist you on your path to innovation, I've divided the bibliography into sections that work along with the steps, so that if you want more information and/or other ideas, you can do more research on your own. There are many references that can fall under these steps—this is just a sampling. If you find another super reference, please send me e-mail.

One of the keys to changing a library is to start the process. There are many reasons to resist implementing change in libraries—not the least of which are the difficulty and pain.

— Donald E. Riggs, 1997

Allyson N. Nolan is director of library services for U.S. Army Soldier Systems Command at the Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center in Natick, Massachusetts, and has been there in various positions for 12 years. Nolan has a degree from Simmons College, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and she is currently working on a Doctorate in Science in Managing Engineering and Technology at Southern California University. Her e-mail address is anolan@_natick-emh2.ariny.mil.

Bibliography