Careers in Electronic Publishing

Beth A. Reiten, MLISCustomer Education & Training Specialist

January 30, 2009

ENVIRONMENT?

• Public

• K12

• Academic

• Special– Museum/Archives– Corporate– Medical– Government– Other

FOCUS?

• User Services

– Research / Reference

– User Instruction / Training

• Technical Services

– Cataloging

• Administrative Services

– Management

MOTIVATION?

• Money

• Praise

• Opportunities for Advancement

• Accomplishment

– e.g. seeing a completed project

CHANGES

“Jobs for librarians outside traditional settings will grow the fastest over the decade. Nontraditional librarian jobs include working as information brokers and working for private corporations, nonprofit organizations, and consulting firms... Librarians working in these settings may be classified as systems analysts, database specialists and trainers, webmasters or web developers, or local area network (LAN) coordinators.”

-From the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos068.htm

-Accessed January 22, 2009

The ProQuest Family

• Provides access to more than 125 billion digital pages of the world's scholarship from over 9,000 publishers spanning more than 500 years, covering subjects from arts and literature to science, technology and medicine

• World’s largest digital newspaper archive

• Houses the Library of Congress’ only off-site repository - Dissertations

Company Overview

Careers in Electronic Publishing

aka – Sales Reps

• User Services

• Responsibilities:– Introduce customers to new products– Identify solutions to customer needs– Liaise with all departments to ensure customer

satisfaction

• Motivators:– Money, Accomplishments, Opportunities for

Advancement

Account Executives

K12 Account Executive

CarolAnn McCloskey, University of South Florida

Account Executive – K12• Worked as an English teacher for 10 years• Graduated in December 2007• Did an Internet search for the word “librarian” while

looking for jobs and found this one!

How does she like working at ProQuest so far?“It’s been wonderful and exciting! I’ve gotten some nice notes from customers because they love to hear from someone who has an MLS.”

Customer Care and Education

aka – Trainers

• 23+ Worldwide

• Provide product training• Customer training

• Post-sale• Pre-sale• Internal

• Create training documentation

• Motivators: Praise

The North American Academic Team

Where to find us:

What We Do (Short Version)

8am - 20 second commute

8:05 - Check e-mail (Scheduling, etc.)

9:00 - Review to-do list, prepare for morning session

10:00 - Webinar

11:00 - Report and follow-up

Noon - Lunch!

Afternoon – Planning / Various Tasks– Coordinating with Account Representatives– Preparing for upcoming training sessions– Ongoing projects (training outlines, user aids, help

documentation)

A “Typical” Day at the office…

8am – breakfast at hotel

8:45 – Arrive early for 9am meeting

9am – Review Administrative Module 1-on-1 with librarian

10am – Group training session

Noon - Lunch!

1:45 – arrive early for afternoon training

2pm – Group training session

4pm – return to hotel, check e-mail

Evening activities:

Stay in, write reports, and order room service

OR

Dinner out and Sightseeing!

A “Typical” Day on the road…

• User Services / Administrative Services

• Responsibilities:– Manage all aspects of product development

– Liaise with various departments

– Product Champion

• Motivators:

– Accomplishments

– Opportunities for Advancement

Product Management

Sally Fell (MLS: University of Michigan)Product Manager - Newspapers

• Manage all aspects of Newspaper Product Development• Liaise with all departments to guide products and enhancements

from conception to implementation

What she loves most about her job:“Having an impact on both how our customers use and

value our products along with influencing product improvements. Most of all, I like solving a customer’s problem successfully and eliminating barriers for them.”

The Librarian behind ProQuest Newspapers

Jo-Anne Hogan (MLS: University of Western Ontario)Product Manager – Chadwyck-Healey• Manage products in the humanities and social sciences

• Develop new products in those areas

• Liaise with production, editorial, sales, marketing, customer service, technical support, publisher relations, and finance to ensure that products are profitable and meet customer and user needs

• Identify new product opportunities and develop them from business case stage, through requirements and specification, to launch

The Librarian behind Chadwyck-Healey

Jo-Anne Hogan on why her MLIS degree is useful

Helping me understand and keep on top of things that affect our industry:

• Indexing, cataloguing, MARC standards, taxonomies, metadata standards

• Reference

• Training

• User-centered interface design

• Collection development

• Acquisitions, budgeting and licensing

• Copyright

• Marketing• Monitoring trends in librarianship, the future of the profession and the industry. 

Monitoring trends in higher education and scholarly publishing.  Monitoring trends in technology such as Web 2.0 and media convergence.  

• Figuring out what it all means for vendors like ProQuest.

Why the MLS?

OverviewUMI® Research Collections bring unique primary resources to libraries in compact, long-lasting microform, along with the searchable MARC records and online indexes that make this material easily accessible.

“Why Microforms?”• Large research libraries are frequently interested in both electronic

and film collections because of the archival nature of film and the amount of storage space it saves.

• One University librarian recently emphasized that the longevity of film makes it critically important that their library have the option of purchasing our electronic products for access, and the film versions for the long term.

UMI® Research Collections

Janet Chin (MLS: University of Michigan)Catalog Librarian

• Cataloging books on microform, main responsibility for EEBO• Create the MARC records for the film products, and

eventually the online product when it is scanned

What she loves most about her job:“The thing I enjoy most is the "detective work" frequently involved in identifying authors, subjects, of these very early printed materials. Second, I have always enjoyed history and have a passion for art and art history, so I've sort of become a default early English history expert, and have also found great pleasure in seeing on film and identifying great works of printed book art.”

A Librarian behind EEBO

A Librarian behind Research Collections

Tom Nanzig (MLS: University of Michigan)Editor, Research Collections• Select and coordinate titles to be filmed for the genealogy and

local history collection

What he loves most about his job:“Let's see; I live only four miles from my work place so I can drive or ride my motorcycle

as the weather and gas prices allow, my wife works about 100 yards away in a nearby building, my colleagues, though somewhat introverted by nature, are some of the nicest people with whom I could wish to work and I get to set my own hourly work schedule.

Then there is the wide and interesting variety of material (history, genealogy, radical magazines, out-of-print books by the thousands!) and the freedom to determine on a daily basis what work areas need attention.  Finally, I have been particularly lucky in having access to film one of the outstanding Civil War book collections in the country (at the Huntington Library in California)…  It's sort of like asking the fox to grade eggs in the hen house.”

Diane Hoffman (MLS: Syracuse University)

Then: Senior Life Sciences Product Manager

Now: Senior Product Manager in Research Solutions

Gretchen Hanson (MLS: University of Maryland)

Technical Product Manager• responsible for coordinating the strategic direction and for

planning and execution of development objectives for the CSA Illumina user interface

Librarians behind CSA Illustrata

Jane Burke (MLS: Dominican University)Vice President, ProQuest and General Manager, SerialsSolutions• Manage all operations of Serials Solutions

“I moved from being a reference librarian to being a librarian within a company that built and sold software to libraries a very long time ago. It has been a wonderful career, and I have loved it.”

Another Notable Librarian

Beth A. Reiten, MLISCustomer Education &Training Specialist

beth.reiten@proquest.com

For More Information…

…on Careers in Electronic PublishingOr

…the ProQuest Library School Program