THE AGILE LIBRARIAN’S GUIDE TO THRIVING IN ANY

INSTITUTION

LASL Midwinter Conference

LSU Alexandria

January 30, 2010

Michelynn McKnight, PhD, AHIP

School of Library and Information Science

Louisiana State University

mmck@lsu.edu

BASED ON

“Proving Your Worth:

Using Professional, Business, and Marketing

Tools to Convince Non-Librarian Decision

Makers of the Value of your Essential

Services”

1. Know your value to your organization

2. Delight your clients

3. Expand your political influence

4. Please your boss

5. Impress decision makers

6. Choose an instantly credible professional image

7. Ensure positive communication

8. Marketing, advertising and public relations

9. Gathering and using evidence to support decisions

10. Behaving ethically

11. Sustaining your green and growing career

PROFESSIONALS

Know Show

Tell

1. YOUR VALUE TO YOUR SCHOOL

Your specialized expertise Determining needs and desires Knowledge of information sources Connecting needs and sources

Your professionalism Professional association, education, theoretical

and practical knowledge, code of ethics, service orientation, community recognition

Your role in the school’s mission Know how the school needs you Show how it needs you Tell the decision makers

SEVEN MARKS OF A PROFESSIONMICHAEL WINTER

Professional Association

Licensing or credentialing

Ethics Code Formal Training

Legitimate monopoly over a body of knowledge

Service Orientation Community

Recognition

2. DELIGHT YOUR CLIENTS

Who are your clients? Expand your clientele

Take action: the onus is on us

What do clients need and want

Population information needs

Individual information needs

Remove barriers to client delight … including old rules

Traditions and habits: gateways or barriers?

Ambience and attitude

3. EXPANDING YOUR INFLUENCE Effective organizational politics

Understand the system Know when to hold and when to fold Believe in Win-Win Situations Play Fair Think first, act later

Lessons from the pros in government Get and use good information sources Show up, speak up Come prepared Engage and balance responses Constantly build positive alliances and

relationships Building positive political capital Advocacy outside the institution

4. PLEASING YOUR BOSS

Allies, mentors and mentees

What does the boss want? What does the boss need?

Leadership and management styles

Training, educating and “sharing with” the boss

Reference and updates services

Informing the boss The good The bad The inconvenient

truth

Understanding roles and perspectives

Information services for the boss

5. IMPRESSING DECISION MAKERS

Who are these decision makers? Why are their understanding and experiences

of library services important? What are stakeholder concerns? Actions that impress

Active and personal direct information services General visibility Stakeholders’ reports Your reports

6. AN INSTANTLY CREDIBLE PROFESSIONAL IMAGE

The big study

Improving our image to increase our credibility Color attracts Dress for your clients Neatness counts That sounds good! That tastes good! You don’t look like a librarian

7. POSITIVE COMMUNICATION (SLIDE 1)

Welcome

Personal welcome

Save the client’s time

Where is it?

Negative actions

Verbal messages: from negative to positive

What to say

Scripts and the magic eraser word

What to write

7. POSITIVE COMMUNICATION (SLIDE 2)

Complaints as reference questions in disguise

Stages of the complaint interview

Stage One – open a communication channel

Stage Two – gather information to frame the larger context of the problem

Stage Three – work together to define and refine the central problem

Stage Four – search for information, answers or solutions

Stage Five – communicate, evaluate and invite

7. POSITIVE COMMUNICATION (SLIDE 3)

Acting professionally when feelings are intense

Common ground and innovative, mutually beneficial solutions

Resulting promotions and innovations

Prioritizing your own complaints

When you should complain

8. MARKETING, ADVERTISING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

The right people Market

segmentation Relationship

marketing The right product The right promotion The right point in

time The right place

What evidence would answer the question

Gathering and analyzing data

Drawing conclusions Taking action Asking another

question

Real MarketingMarketing research: finding the right “P”

Ask, Study, Act, Ask: Comparing the stages of marketing, QI and EBLwith Reference Service (©Michelynn McKnight)

ASKDefine the Question

STUDYEstimate where the answer may be found

STUDYChoose a method for finding out

STUDYGather the data

STUDY, ACTAnalyze the results

ACT, ASKPropose questions for further study

Reference Service(satisfying one person)

Conduct a reference interview to understand the question

Consider possible sources for the answer

Consult the sources

Retrieve documents

Choose relevant documents

Deliver to client and ask client if this completely answers the question

Marketing(satisfying a group of users or potential users)

What is the service?

What is the population of users or clients for this service?

Design a study to find out what the users or clients want and need from the service.

Carry out the study

Analyze the results Design, promote, implement and evaluate service improvements.

Quality Improvement(improving internal processes)

Find a process to improve

Who should be on the team to improve this process?

Gather data on the current process and identify the desired improvement

Plan and implement the process change

Gather data on the process after the change and compare to the before change data

Evaluate the effectiveness of the improvement and suggest the next process to improve

Evidence Based Librarianship(searching and applying the results of relevant published research) [1]

“Formulate a clearly defined, answerable question that addresses an important issue in librarianship”

“Search the published and unpublished literature, plus any other authoritative resources for the best-available evidence with relevance to the posed question.”

“Evaluate the validity (closeness to the truth) and relevance of the evidence”

Formulate an action plan based on the evidence; “Assess the relative value of expected benefits and costs.”

Implement a plan of action

“Evaluate the effectiveness of the action plan”

9. GATHERING AND USING EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT

DECISIONS

Research Librarians and research education Research and professional associations

Evidence based librarianship Assessment and measurement of quality and

value Standards Benchmarking

Evidence of client satisfaction Value evidence for top administrative

decision makers

10. BEHAVING ETHICALLY

Responsibility for the provision of the best possible information service

Respect for others, protection of privacy and preservation of confidentiality

Promotion of equitable information access while respecting intellectual property rights and the institutional mission

Professional development of the self and others

Advocacy for library services and information access in society

11. YOUR GREEN AND GROWING CAREER

Your own missions Setting priorities

Urgency and importance Perfect or good enough Tools

Scheduling Make appointments not only with others but also

with yourself One list is never enough

Risk taking and reward: dare to be proactive Keep starting again

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (1981) STRENGTH TO LOVE. (REPRINT OF 1977 EDITION, CLEVELAND, OHIO: COLLINS) PHILADELPHIA: FORTRESS PRESS, PAGE 93

“Some of us, of course, will die without having received the realization of freedom, but we must continue to sail on our charted course. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.”

THE AGILE LIBRARIAN’S GUIDE TO THRIVING IN ANY

INSTITUTION

LASL Midwinter Conference

LSU Alexandria

January 30, 2010

Michelynn McKnight, PhD, AHIP

School of Library and Information Science

Louisiana State University

mmck@lsu.edu