Government Info Pro

2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries Submissions Due by May 13th

This is just a reminder that submissions are still being accepted for the 2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries. The theme is: E-Initiatives and E-Efforts: Expanding Our Horizon. The deadline for submissions is May 13th.

Here are some additional details:

The annual collaborative document, Best Practices for Government Libraries, showcases government librarians who are innovating and creating success in the workplace and beyond. The 2010 Best Practices for Government Libraries includes 70 articles and other submissions provided by more than 60 contributors from libraries in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis consultants, and more. Articles from Best Practices are posted on the Government Info Pro blog.

You can see the PDF version of the 2010 Best Practices here: 2010 Best Practices for Government Libraries: The New Face of Value. Earlier editions are also available in PDF from the right sidebar of the Government Info Pro blog.

This year, the topic for the document is E-Initiatives and E-Efforts: Expanding Our Horizons. We seek examples of your efforts to create, provide, and showcase whatever e-efforts you have been working on: e-libraries, e-collections, e-services, e-pubs, e-programs, e-gov, e-everything. Your submission could be electronic or hard copy, cutting-edge or time-tested but with a new twist, in place or conceptual, in the workplace or in the community.

The scope of submissions is only limited by your imagination. In past years, we have received: program descriptions and promotional materials, planning documents, websites and blog entries, video, displays, original articles, tips and techniques, testimonials, awards, and personal observations on the topic.

I particularly want to encourage you to consider the submission of a short, original article on the topic of E-Initiatives and E-Efforts from any angle: library, organization, profession, or personal.

For the 2011 edition of Best Practices, please submit your electronic documents to Marie Kaddell by email. The deadline for submission is May 13, 2011. If you have any questions about the 2011 Best Practices collaborative document, please do not hesitate to contact me.

7 Best Practices for Creating and Sustaining Value the Peter Drucker Way

Thanks to Bruce Rosenstein, Author, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, for this article: 7 Best Practices for Creating and Sustaining Value the Peter Drucker Way. This article was originally published in the 2010 Best Practices for Government Libraries: The New Face of Value.  Best Practices is a collaborative document that is put out annually on a specific topic of interest to government librarians. The 2010 edition includes over 70 articles and other submissions provided by more than 60 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more.

Remember, I'm still accepting submissions for the 2011 Best Practices through May 13th. It's not too late to write!

Read on...

1. Keep your focus on achievement and leaving something behind of value. If you do that regularly, you will never be finished with worthwhile things to do.
2. Identify and cultivate your unique strengths/core competencies. How can these strengths make you a more valuable person at work and outside of work? How can they help make your organization more valuable?
3. Blend reflection and action. Consider what people in your organization, your personal network, friends and family find valuable. Peter Drucker engaged in focused reflection every summer, sizing up how the previous year played out against his expectations and making changes accordingly.
4. Practice systematic abandonment. You may have to give up things that you enjoy doing, or that your organization found to be useful in the past, in order to create new meaning and new value. Heed this Drucker question: “If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?”
5. Get out of the office and into the world. You can become a more valuable person, and recognize important opportunities for your organization, by developing meaningful leisure opportunities, taking or teaching classes, volunteering or becoming involved in the arts. You’ll meet people who think and act differently from you, and who will broaden your personal and professional perspective. Drucker taught that the meaningful changes for an organization, those with the most impact, tended to come from outside its basic activities.
6. Think through Drucker’s self-assessment questions, applicable for organizations and individuals: What is Our Mission? Who Is Our Customer? What Does the Customer Value? What Are Our Results? What is Our Plan?
7. Your personal legacy matters. What do you want to be remembered for? You don’t know how long you will live, and time is rarely sufficient for all the things you would like to accomplish: decide what needs to be done today to make the world a better place in the future.

Business Monitor International Company and Industry Reports

If you have a need for quarterly and industry reports on foreign companies, then you'll be interested in this tip from the Weekly Tips from Librarian Relations Consultants. This tip is provided by LexisNexis Senior Librarians Relations Consultant, Gayle Lynn-Nelson.

Read on...

Yes, we have just the thing you need; Business Monitor International Industry Reports. The reports contain industry trend analyses, 5- and 10-year industry forecasts, and competitive intelligence on leading multinational companies. Another source you might want to check is the Business Monitor International (BMI) Company Analysis Reports. BMI’s company profiles detail the activity and latest financials of major companies across 20 sectors in over 178 markets. They feature senior executives with contact details; main business activities, brands and products; partners and suppliers; investments, projects and company strategy. BMI’s company profiles are used by business development teams, corporate analysts and strategists for benchmarking and competitive analysis.

Examples of countries included are as follows:

Read the full tip.

Authenticity, Authority, Accuracy and Accessibility

Thanks to Roberta Shaffer, Law Librarian of Congress, Library of Congress, for this article: Authenticity, Authority, Accuracy and Accessibility. Please note that all opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author, and should not be ascribed to her employer, the Library of Congress. This article was originally published in the 2010 Best Practices for Government Libraries: The New Face of Value.  Best Practices is a collaborative document that is put out annually on a specific topic of interest to government librarians. The 2010 edition includes over 70 articles and other submissions provided by more than 60 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more.

Remember, I'm still accepting submissions for the 2011 Best Practices through May 13th. It's not too late to write!

Read on...

In our age, when anything and everything can be used as a weapon of mass destruction, it is often difficult for librarians to imagine such could be the case for information. Yet just as technology enables the ever-faster and ever-freer flow of information, which can bring so many good things to society, it can also be drafted as a soldier of destruction. While it is not a new challenge to consider how misinformation can be used as a negative force, we need to “arm” ourselves with the tools to ensure that the resources we manage are authentic, authoritative, accurate, and accessible. I call these the four pillars of information and they form many of the core values of the information professions.

Driven by the expectations of information impatient populations, there are often pressures on information producers and information stewards to compromise our standards when it comes to the four pillars. Many times, government information producers are asked to defend practices that on their surface seem at odds with the “public’s right to know”-- a pillar, in its own right, of a truly democratic form of government. Yet, public institutions must resist the call to disseminate information when the four pillars of information are not present.

I have done a great deal of soul-searching on the question of authenticity, and in particular when information is sought for distribution in “bulk.” My niche of librarianship is law and for legal information, authenticity is critical. It relates not only to being able to assure the end-user that a particular document is authentic, but also relates to our ability to have confidence in an entire legal system or framework. Therefore because anarchy would be an alternative we, as information professionals, must encourage research in the technology that will find a way to ensure information is authentic at the point that it becomes accessible. And I have hopes that technology will also find a way to guarantee that every “byte” of information will carry its authenticated pedigree with it, no matter how finely it may be parsed down the distribution chain...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN PDF starting on page 64.

REGISTER TODAY: National Press Club Event for Government Librarians Hosted by LexisNexis

 

Register now for a special breakfast event at the National Press Club especially for government librarians hosted by LexisNexis.

PROGRAM:  e-Initiatives and e-Efforts: Expanding Our Horizons

DATE:  Thursday, April 28, 2011

TIME:   8:00 ¬ 11:00 a.m.

Sign-in and continental breakfast begin at 8:30 a.m. Presentation begins promptly at 9:00 a.m.

Guest speakers for this event include:

• James King,!nformation Architect at NIH, Immediate Past President DC/SLA, and SLA Information Futurist Caucus Convener
• John Crosby, CAE, VP, Communications at SIIA
• Susan Slisz, VP, Print Products at LexisNexis

 
 

Location:   National Press Club – Holeman Lounge
                 529 14th Street, Washington, D.C.

Directions:  www.press.org/about/visit-us

Registration:  Click here to register.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Who are you?: Creating A Value Proposition For Librarians In A Tough Economy

Thanks to Jennifer Klang, Head of Reference Services and Deputy Project Manager of the Department of the Interior Library, for this article: Who are you?: Creating A Value Proposition For Librarians In A Tough Economy. This article was originally published in the 2010 Best Practices for Government Libraries: The New Face of Value.  Best Practices is a collaborative document that is put out annually on a specific topic of interest to government librarians. The 2010 edition includes over 70 articles and other submissions provided by more than 60 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more. The call for submissions for the 2011 Best Practices will be coming out soon. Stay tuned!

Read on...

In a recent article, Carol Tenopir offers some suggestions for how libraries can provide evidence of value to their organizations. (“The Value Gap” Library Journal, July 15, 2009) Her article focuses on the collection and use of metrics as a method for demonstrating the value of library services. She states the importance of “measure[ing] collection use fully and better [to] evaluate the value of the library to its constituencies.” She cites a recent report from Ithaka that suggests that users no longer view the library as the primary starting place for information. “Looked at historically, the increase in spending versus the decrease in perceived value has created what can be called a value gap…Improving perceptions is often mostly an exercise in sound marketing and public relations…” Tenopir also makes a great argument for gathering data that can provide evidence of ROI (return on investment).

Who could disagree about the importance of data in providing hard evidence of the value of our institutions? In such difficult economic times every dollar is hard-won, and no library is immune from the challenges of tighter budgets. My institution, the DOI Library, recently began collecting customer service data through a web survey tool. At the DOI Library, every e-mail from the reference staff now contains a link to a brief questionnaire where patrons can discuss their customer service experiences. Ratings received by our library have consistently shown a high degree of satisfaction with the service provided by staff to both employees and the public. We also gather feedback from our many training courses and programs. These questionnaires are used to compile additional data on customer experience that helps us improve our programs and courses. By opening our courses up to the library community, we have been able to provide a service to librarians and researchers, beyond simply our vast print collection. We have also been able to provide publicity and increased relevance of the library in difficult economic times. These have been important steps in demonstrating our value to our institution.

However, there is a second component to the value of our institutions. A library is more than its collection, (whether print or electronic) its services, and its usage. It is also a collection of trained professionals with a particular set of skills. Perhaps it is time for a closer examination of best practices of librarians, rather than libraries. What is the value of a librarian or a library paraprofessional? What are the skills and traits that our profession has (or should nurture) to further demonstrate our value to our institutions? When users visit a library, they are greeted by both an institution and an individual. Difficult times are a good time to re-examine and refocus. It’s time to reflect on what drew librarians to their profession in the first place. Librarians that find ways to demonstrate the seemingly intangible value of their personalities, attributes and experience can show their institutions that a librarian is more than a human catalogue record that points to books...

READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN PDF starting on page 32.

Keeping Up with State Legislative Changes

If you have a need to keep up with legislative changes surrounding a particular issue across multiple state, then you'll be interested in this tip from the Weekly Tips from Librarian Relations Consultants will be of interest to you. This tip is provided by LexisNexis Senior Librarians Relations Consultant, Leanne Battle.

Read on...

There is a lot of state legislative activity this time of year. How can I keep up with legislative changes surrounding a particular issue across multiple states?

Check out the Legislation & Politics section of the Legal tab at lexis.com. We have two sources there to help: State Net Bill Tracking – Current Session and State Net Full Text of Bills – Current Session.

Search the SYNOPSIS segment in the Bill Tracking file to retrieve a list of bills about a particular issue. Each bill tracking report includes a synopsis and a chronology of bill activity...

Read the full tip.