Rethinking Information Careers

Change happens.

Your company is talking merger with another firm, which means your job may be in play. Your wonderful boss got promoted, only to be replaced with someone who flunked her anger management training… and she’s got her eye on you. Or you’ve heard rumors that the exciting startup you signed on with has burned through its cash at warp speed and now job cuts may be in the works.

It’s not clear that any of these absolutely signal that your job may be in jeopardy, but the smart money is on those odds. What do you do? My advice: hope for the best, plan for the worst, and get your exit strategy in place.

What’s an exit strategy? It’s an action plan built around your “what next” questions: after this job, what kind of work would you like to be doing, for whom (and, possibly, where) would you like to be doing it, and what actions do you need to take over the next several weeks/month/quarters in order to be positioned to have those choices?

Benefits of an Exit Strategy

Going through an exit-strategy process provides a number of benefits when you’re in the midst of a work environment where you have no idea about – and little or no influence over – the outcomes.

First, it allows you to detach emotionally and move your energy from obsessing about “what’s going to happen/what if I lose my job” to “I’m in control of my future, and I need to invest my energy and attention into determining what my next job options will be.”

Essentially, you simply assume that your current situation is most likely going to end, mourn its loss if you need/want to, and prepare yourself to move on. That way you’re not waiting for someone to give you the bad news; you’ve already started moving beyond that inevitability into a better future. You have taken charge of your career and your choices, which places you in the power position. You’ve moved from a passive stance (waiting for someone else to decide what happens) to an active one (you’re deciding what you want your next phase to look like).

Second, an exit strategy allows you to hit the ground running if a layoff happens. You’ve already mapped out what you need to do and who you need to contact, so you don’t need to waste time trying to figure all this out when you’re in a funk from losing your job. All you need to do is follow the action plan you’ve already lined out when you’re ready to engage.

Third, having an exit strategy in place before you need it means you have time to start doing the prep work now to be solidly positioned for your next opportunity. For example, if you’ve been reading about web producer positions in job postings but realize your XML skills are lacking, now is the time to start taking classes or reading books on XML. Then, by the time you’re applying for those jobs, you already have the knowledge you need — and (best case) you’ve found ways to practice and hone those skills.

The Questions to Ask Yourself

Creating an exit strategy starts with asking yourself some basic questions, specifically:

1. What type of work might you like to do next? This might be working in a specific industry, for a particular company, or doing a certain kind of work. You may have several ideas in mind, but your starting point is to identify a preferred path (or paths) that you’d like to have open to you if you leave your current situation.
2. What information do you need to know about that industry, company, or type of work in order to better understand 1) what opportunities might exist, and 2) how to find jobs in your area of interest (job lists, conferences, networking, other?).
3. What skills and/or knowledge might you need in order to be of value in the position you seek? One of the most effective ways to do this is by undertaking a SWOT analysis – an assessment of your professional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to a potential career opportunity. Your goal here is to identify where you need to “bulk up” in the areas where you may have knowledge or skill gaps. Then take it one step further and determine when and how you will gain that knowledge.
4. Consider your professional network – who will you want to notify, when the time comes, that you’re going to be “on the market?” Start putting this list together now, as well as drafting a brief, upbeat letter that lets people know how much you’ve enjoyed your current job, but also how excited you are to explore new opportunities. Also, what relationships would it be helpful to have in place when you’re ready to move on to your next career opportunity, and how might you go about establishing those? For example, will you join a professional organization and get active in the local chapter in order to meet more people in a specific industry or profession? Volunteer with a local nonprofit to contribute your skills in a non-LIS environment? What else?
5. What professional “administrivia” do you need to take care of before a change is likely to happen? This may include updating your resume (and possibly working with a coach to do so), making copies of any of your office files that contain information you’d like to have available to you in the future, and creating documentation for how you perform your job responsibilities to ensure as smooth a transition as possibly if there is staff turnover. (No matter the circumstances surrounding your leaving, it’s always a smart idea to leave on a positive note if possible.)
6. Lastly, what do you need to do in your personal life to be ready for the disruption of change? It helps to get things like medical checkups, car maintenance, and house repairs taken care of to the best extent possible so that when a change arrives, there is still order in other aspects of your life.

Create Your Timeline

Once you’ve identified what actions you’ll undertake and information you’ll gather, it’s time to establish your execution timeline.

As someone who’s gone through this drill way more times than any sane person should, I tend to put together my exit strategies in three-month chunks, with the most critical actions done first in case it turns out I only have two months (or, in one case, two weeks!) before things head south.

So a way to approach this would be to look at, say, a three-month period, and line out on a week-by-week basis which of your actions you will do when. For example, you might decide that the most critical items are doing a SWOT analysis and updating your resume. The first month, then, you might spend your lunch hours and Sunday afternoons working on these action items. The second month might be dedicated to researching potential employers and positions as well as broadening your community of contacts. So your lunch hours might be spent cruising job sites and doing industry/company research, and you might also identify and join a professional organization related to your future job interests.

Your third month might focus on connecting with those individuals in your professional community or network who you might want to alert to your potential availability. So perhaps you’d schedule several “catch-up” lunches each week, or coffee after work with a number of former colleagues. Month by month, week by week, you would continue working through your priority list. You would essentially be preparing yourself for your next career opportunity, until you felt confident that if a job change, a.k.a., layoff, were to happen, you’d be ready to move forward toward your new opportunities.

Your Exit Strategy Puts You in Control

You may find that you want to put all these actions in a very different order (or undertake different actions). But the idea is to immediately begin to take an active role in what your future is going to look like.

This will make you less anxious about outcomes over which you have very little influence, and give you confidence because you’re investing your time and energy in outcomes you can shape through your own efforts. That confidence is important to a potential employer, because you want that person to see you not as an employee who’s holding onto a job for dear life, but as a professional who understands he or she has value to contribute, and is more than happy to leave for a new opportunity if it’s the right one.

It’s important to keep in mind that you can do everything right, and still be out of a job. Companies make these sorts of decisions for all sorts of reasons that may have nothing to do with intelligent thinking (or your extraordinary value). So the only thing you can do is put as little time and energy into being unhappy about that as possible, and instead invest all of your best efforts into creating the next phase of your professional life.

Tags: Add new tag, changing jobs, downsizing, getting laid off, layoffs

At this year’s SLA conference one of the hot topics was “embedded librarianship” –- that is, working as an information pro for an organization, but not necessarily being attached to or affiliated with a corporate library or business information center.

Sometimes info pros end up as embedded librarians because their organization did away with their library, but were smart enough to realize the brain power of the library’s staffers was too valuable to lose. Other times this is because people were recruited out of the library to work directly, “on the ground,” with an operational team (for example, the product development team). Or it might be that an ops team was simply savvy enough to realize how much they’d benefit from the research/writing/information organization skills of an info pro, and hired directly for that skill set.

Regardless of the path taken to get there, embedded librarianship offers an interesting and potentially growing career opportunity for info pros, one that allows them to contribute directly to team and organizational goals (and make visible their value to the bottom line).

However, when discussing this with students recently, it became clear that unless you’re pretty familiar with how organizations operate, it can be a challenge to figure out exactly where your skills can add value. Within an organization, who needs what information, and how do they use it? Knowing this basic information will be critical to being able to plug in and add value, so here is a very rudimentary overview of how most organizations organize themselves, what departments do what work, and the information they need to do it. Keep in mind that every organization is different, so this should be considered simply a guide rather than a roadmap to any specific company’s organizational layout.

Human Resources. Works with: department heads, legal department, contract trainers, benefits providers and vendors. Accountable for: aligning workforce abilities with company needs; recruitment and retention; providing appropriate learning opportunities to grow the workforce; creating and managing competitive benefits and compensation programs; establishing contract and outsourced/off-shored employee relationships. Key issues: legal issues related to personnel matters; staying current with HR, T&D, benefits, and compensation best practices; advances in recruiting, hiring, and compensation practices. Information needs: best practices, benchmarks; vendor/provider background research, evaluations, comparisons; training and development resources.

Information Systems (“IT”). Works with: department heads; legal department (compliance); contract programmers. Accountable for: aligning enterprise IT infrastructure with company needs and strategy; allocating budget to reflect often-competing strategic priorities; evaluating new technologies in terms of long-term enterprise needs; creating new product IT, managing contractors responsible for creating new product IT, or managing relationship with vendor partner responsible for creating new product IT; supporting legal requirements (records retention policies). Key issues: managing unrealistic executive expectations; staying current on emerging technologies, bugs, and applications; understanding enterprise goals in order to support them via IT; getting other departments to understand and support IT roles and activities. Information needs: staying apprised of emerging information technologies; vendor/provider background research, evaluations, comparisons.

Sales and Marketing. Works with: product developers; engineering and development; finance (for product pricing issues); corporate communications (press releases). Accountable for: performing market research, market segmentation; creating and executing marketing and sales campaigns; documenting return-on-investment (ROI) of marketing campaigns; setting and meeting sales goals. Key issues: understanding characteristics of market opportunity; understanding customers’ purchase drivers, segments; understanding competitive landscape; organizing and managing a high-quality customer care program. Information needs: market, customer, and competitor information (includes demographics, purchase drivers, product response, trends and changing patterns); sales data; effective sales channels and approaches; statistical information; market research/characteristics of potential opportunities; call center and customer service best practices, benchmarking

Finance. Works with: department heads and key company strategists and decision-makers; legal dept (Sarbanes-Oxley, compliance issues); outside and internal auditors; investors and industry analysts; SEC (if public). Accountable for: integrity of company’s financial reporting; integrity of company’s financial operations; budget data; industry comparisons and ratios. Key issues: legal issues related to financial requirements; financial strength of organization relative to similar companies; competitive intelligence regarding potential joint ventures partners, acquisitions, or hostile takeovers. Information needs: internal financial performance data; budget data; industry comparisons and ratios; competitive intelligence of a financial nature; market trends (for financial forecasting); regulatory or market developments that may impact revenues.

Engineering and Production. Works with: product managers; sales and marketing; suppliers. Accountable for: creating products within technical and budget specifications; delivering products on time; using best practices and processes to maximize product’s consumer benefit while minimizing product production costs; supply-chain management; creative and managing competitive benefits and compensation programs; establishing contract & outsourced/off-shored employee relationships. Key issues: maximum-efficiency, minimum-cost production processes; optimizing supply-chain management processes (vendor relations and specifications). Information needs: best practices, benchmarks; vendor/provider/supplier background research, evaluations, comparisons; advances in engineering and materials sciences.

Legal. Works with: department heads, especially on contractual agreements; finance; HR; corporate communications (press releases). Accountable for: ensuring company compliance with all legal/regulatory restrictions; ensuring legality of hr policies; ensuring that contracts are appropriate and not damaging to the organization; working with outside counsel in the event of a lawsuit. Key issues: legal issues related to personnel matters; regulatory requirements and proposed regulations; keeping the company out of lawsuits. Information needs: ongoing updating regarding legal and regulatory changes; legal decisions and proceedings, current and background; any pending SEC issues.

Corporate Communications. Works with: department heads; legal dept; sales & marketing; “visible” executives making public statements. Accountable for: creating and placing external messages to “brand and position” the company, rather than the product (which is sales & marketing); communicating with the organization’s various constituencies, including investors, the media, and competitors; building and protecting the company’s reputation in the marketplace; managing public-relations crises. Key issues: controlling messages and communication processes; avoiding public-relations disasters; creating positive views about the company and its products; positioning the company and its leadership as capable, innovative, and expert. Information needs: quotable statistics, background information, competitive intelligence; media research; issues research; speech/article backgrounders.

Keep in mind that every organization has information needs specific to its business and the products and services it delivers. Just consider this a starter “map” to get you thinking about where and how your information skills could add value within your current organization — or one you’d like to work for.

Tags: corporate information, embedded librarianship

One of the great things about teaching a course in alternative LIS career paths is that it provides a great excuse to invite really smart people in the information profession to share their wisdom with all of us. We’ve heard from public library directors, information brokers, special librarians, library consultants, and a former LIS professional now applying her info/research skills as a niche-market travel agent.

Recently, I and my students had the opportunity to hear from Pat Wagner, a nationally-known trainer and management consultant to libraries, universities, government agencies, and nonprofits. Pat is known for her wit, energy, smarts, and…complete willingness to tell you when you’re being really dumb. Consequently, most of us have learned over the years to pay attention to Pat’s ideas, even (especially?) when they go against conventional wisdom.

In her recent student discussion, Pat focused on understanding how organizations work and where we all fit in. She stressed that being smart and innovative was a good start, but only a good start: In order to build a successful and accomplished career, you also have to be realistic about how to navigate your work environment. Think of this as emotional intelligence for your career.

Pat’s reality check comprised about two dozen key points – essentially, attitudes and expectations that will serve you well regardless the type of organization you’re working within. Following, find the points Pat says we should all be scoring ourselves on. How do you stack up?

• Ÿ I always am building collaborative and sustainable relationships, inside and outside my career path. The person I am nice to today could be my boss tomorrow.
• Ÿ I am the theater director, not the star: I elicit the best from the people I work with and for.
• Ÿ I understand the realities of local practice. What I learn in graduate school might be meaningless in any given library or institution.
• Ÿ I know how to earn the trust and respect of my bosses, co-workers and employees.
• Ÿ I know that feuds and moods are self-indulgent. No prima donnas, no grumps.
• Ÿ I like library users specifically, and people in general. I don’t work at a library to hide out from humans.
• Ÿ I have no status issues about my roles in the library, no matter how old or successful I get.
• Ÿ I know I have to earn my pay, every day. No entitlement issues, no matter how old or successful I get.
• Ÿ I accept that the more secure the workplace, the more constraining the hierarchy. Large (and well-paying) public, academic, school and corporate employers usually are the most constraining.
• Ÿ I accept the cost/benefit ratio of most jobs. I don’t whine; I productively make changes as I can.
• Ÿ I am an expert at the governance structure of my workplace: I know who makes decisions, and how.
• Ÿ I know I am always auditioning for my next gig and that no position is permanent.
• Ÿ I anticipate that:
• Ÿ Few people will defer to me because I have a graduate degree.
• Ÿ No single factor will guarantee I get the jobs or recognition I want or deserve.
• Ÿ I will receive promotions and raises that have nothing to do with my abilities as a librarian.
• Ÿ Flexibility, reliability, hard work, good humor and a calm demeanor will probably have more to do with my success than being smart or innovative.
• Ÿ I will make a lot of mistakes, and many of them I won’t know about, because other people fix them.
• Ÿ I will be right, they will be wrong, and no one will care or remember.
• Ÿ I will be asked to take responsibility for mistakes that are not my fault.
• Ÿ I will have to work with and for people I don’t like.
• Ÿ I will be asked to do things I did not sign up to do.
• Ÿ My workplace will change in ways that are unexpected. I will never be 100% prepared.

So how did you score?

No matter where you came in, I’d suggest you keep these attitudes, actions, and expectations in mind as you go through your career. And one more piece of advice: if you ever have a chance to hear Pat speak at a conference or in your workplace, don’t pass it up. You’ll absorb lots of important insights, even while you’re laughing – always the best way to learn. You can find Pat at her Pattern Research website.

Tags: alternative careers, career development, Pat Wagner, pattern research, relationships

One of the great things about an MLIS is its nearly endless adaptability to new opportunities. An example of that adaptability is information strategy work.

Information strategy simply involves helping organizations align how they externally deploy their information resources to support or drive the organization’s key business goals. For example, a nonprofit may have a goal to help the general public learn more about a given topic, such as care-giving for aging parents. A for-profit company may have a goal to help potential customers learn a variety of ways its product can be used effectively, thus driving sales. A government agency may have a goal of helping people be able to quickly find local emergency preparedness providers, thus supporting its mandate to protect at-risk citizens.

What, then, is an information strategist? From my perspective, it’s someone who sees information as a strategic asset and is able to help organizations use it to achieve their goals. From my experience, this is a career path that many LIS professionals would be great at!

What an Information Strategist Does

The role of an information strategist is to identify, license, create, or link to information content that will help organizations achieve their key goals. Part of that process is working with the relevant decision-makers within the organization – perhaps the marketing director, public relations person, or business development team (or any combination of these individuals) – to clearly understand what those goals are. But, usually these begin with the word “more” – that is, more revenue, more profits, more visibility, more members, more donations, more whatever.

Once you’ve clarified what the organization’s high-priority goals are, you then look at what information content might be used to help achieve those goals, and in what format. Might it be a series of white papers? Several industry-specific case studies? An online tutorial? A publication available only to members? Or perhaps all of the above?

To work through this process, you would go through the following steps:

Review the organization’s strategic goals. For example, is it trying to recruit new members or increase donor contributions? Is this year’s goal to develop new markets, or increase revenue from existing clients? Is the board pushing for greater visibility and credibility among thought leaders, scholars, the media? Or is the goal to more effectively disseminate information to the public for broader impact the organization’s most pressing mandate? These are only some of the goals that businesses, nonprofits, and/or government agencies may have that can be supported by print and/or online information content.

Determine what information content will help support/drive those goals. For example, if the goal is to increase visibility among thought leaders, scholars, and the media, an organization might consider doing a monthly interview/column with industry influentials and academic scholars to be posted at the website, then creating an annual compilation of key quotes, trends, and ideas to circulate to the media for story ideas. (The job of the information strategist would be to help them develop the concept, establish processes for creating the monthly column, research and recommend individuals to interview, possibly do the interviews, create the annual summary and analysis for the media, and identify the appropriate media contacts for distribution.)

Determine what information content the organization already has. Many organizations have been creating information content for decades. This can include publications, video and audio pieces, oral histories, conference proceedings, training materials, archival photographs and memorabilia, and similar sorts of materials. Often this can be repackaged and repurposed to provide membership incentives, additional revenue streams, or reference materials of value to scholars, researchers, and the media, among other options. For example, print content can be digitized and housed in a searchable, fee-based database, or made available to members for free as a benefit for signing on.

Determine what other information content needs to be created, licensed, aggregated, or otherwise acquired. Would a research guide on how to find industry statistics help position an organization as an expert authority with researchers and the media? Would an online tutorial on how to be an effective online learner help potential students sign up for a college’s online degree program? Would a members-only column by a best-selling expert on personal finance cause people to join a newly-launched investment club? Would a directory of clinicians specializing in disability rehabilitation draw users to an advertiser-supported, disability-focused website, and thus increase advertising revenue?

Based on the answers to these types of questions, an information strategist would then work with the client to develop and execute a project plan that incorporated all of the actions determined to help achieve the goals of greatest importance to the organization. Sometimes this might be a phased plan, with priorities set over a 6-, 12-, or even 18-month period; others times you (and/or the organization) may be pushing against a website launch date that has everyone scrambling to create and/or aggregate as much content as possible in the shortest amount of time humanly possible! (Actually, in my experience, it’s usually the latter….)

To wrap up the project (or build an ongoing relationship), an information strategist would then help the organization determine how they would maintain and update the content elements that had been built, and consider additional ways that information content can help them continue to expand their opportunities with current or new constituencies.

So if you’re thinking about expanding your info work in an interesting and challenging direction, consider looking for opportunities to exercise your “strategy” muscle. Bring together your ability to research, analyze, synthesize, write, aggregate and organize information, then layer on an ability to understand and align with business/organization priorities. Whether you’re officially called an information strategist or some other variation of information professional, the goal is to use your info skills to have a positive impact on the key goals of your client or organization.

For Further Exploration

Naumes, William. The Art and Craft of Case Writing, 2^nd ed. Sharpe Reference, 2006. 296p. IBSN 0765616823.
A primer on how to research and write case studies, including developing objectives, doing data collection, drafting the case, reviewing and revising, and (for faculty), how to create case-related teaching notes.

Scott, David Meerman. Cashing In With Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers into Buyers. Information Today, Inc., 2005. 280p. ISBN 0910965714.
An outstanding overview of how online content can be used to achieve business (or nonprofit) goals.

Scott, David Meerman. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. Wiley, 2007. 275p. ISBN 0470113456.
A key component of information strategy is repurposing and repacking existing content – and blogs and podcasting are a great way to do it.

Steizner, Michael A. Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged. WhitePaperSource Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0977716937.
White papers have become one of the most effective ways to deliver information to various audiences – whether other businesses, clients, customers, members, or the general public. Steizner describes the various uses for white papers, and how to write effective ones.

Tags: information professional, information strategy, information work

Fall down seven times, get up eight.
- Japanese proverb

Every spring marks the start of a new opportunity to work with students, specifically those taking the Alternative Careers class I teach for the University of Denver LIS program. It is one of the most rewarding – and challenging – parts of my professional life.

How does one say with any level of confidence (or honesty) “yes, this might be a great professional path for you to follow,” when the reality is we have no idea what career paths are likely to survive or emerge over the coming decades? Will there still be corporate libraries? Will there still be MLS-staffed reference desks in public libraries? What will be the role of academic libraries – and librarians – in a world of online learning and embedded resources? What new roles and opportunities will emerge that we can barely imagine today?

My belief is that, for every contracting LIS opportunity, ten new ones will open up. Demand for our skills may change in the coming years, but I don’t believe that demand will lessen – it will simply be coming from new and different constituencies. We may be deploying our skills on new types of projects, for new types of employers, with very different job descriptions. But we most certainly be deploying those skills.

So given this somewhat chaotic vision of the future, what do I tell my students is the most important LIS skill they can learn? Information networking? Research and reference? Web development?

Nope. Resiliency.

Essentially, resiliency is the ability to bounce back from a setback, to refuse to be derailed or defeated by adversity, to embrace the opportunity inherent in change. Resilience is based on flexibility and adaptability, and a belief that although circumstances may be difficult or confusing, you have what it takes to handle whatever’s thrown your way.

Psychiatrist Frederic Flach, who has written extensively about personal resiliency (see, for example, Resilience: Discovering a New Strength at Times of Stress, rev. ed., Hatherleigh Press, 2004), describes the personality traits that define a resilient individual as:

Creativity. The ability to tolerate pain. Insight into ourselves and what we are going through at any particular phase in our lives. Independence of spirit. Self respect. The ability to restore self esteem when it is diminished or temporarily lost. A capacity for learning. The ability to make and keep friends. Freedom to depend on others, with the skill to set proper limits on the depth of our dependency. A perspective on life that offers a vital, evolving philosophy within which we can interpret all that we experience and from which we can discover some measure of personal meaning.

Now, generally, in an LIS program (as in the LIS profession as a whole), you’re given high marks for learning and following the rules. There’s usually somewhat less support for the “hey, here’s a crazy-cool idea that’s never been tried – let’s try it!” types of initiatives. Yet that’s exactly the sort of thinking we need to cultivate (if not instigate) in order to become more resilient in our careers and as a profession.

So the way we approach this in class is to structure what-if scenarios around the sorts of obstacles or setbacks any of us might encounter in our careers. We’ll put one of these on the whiteboard (the class favorite is almost always “help, I’m ready to strangle my boss”– perhaps suggesting the need for a bit more management training in LIS programs?) and then we brainstorm solutions to the problem.

And the interesting thing is that the solution is never that the problem improves (no points for “my boss gets a personality transplant!”), but rather that the students come up with alternative strategies for dealing with the problem. The solutions are uniformly creative, realistic, and based on an expectation of personal responsibility. Basically, that translates into “what steps can I realistically take to improve this situation for myself?”

Or we’ll look at the really daunting challenge: someone just lost his or her job. No matter how solid you are, getting laid off can’t help but shake your confidence. And yet clearly this is the time you need that sense of personal resiliency the most (speaking from personal experience here). If you go back to Flach’s list of characteristics, you’ll see that each and every one of these will help you traverse the anger, pain, embarrassment, and confusion you’ll have to process through to get to the other side of your emotions – the side where you’re ready to go after the next great opportunity.

An additional characteristic that I believe contributes to personal resiliency is how you frame the stories of your life. We all have setbacks. But you can either decide that these setbacks are simply part of the normal up-and-down trajectory of a dynamic career and part of your ongoing career-building process, or you can let them derail you. How? By taking them personally, by seeing yourself as a victim, by giving in to a sense of powerlessness regarding your own life. Framing events this way keeps you stuck, when what you really want to be doing is feeling the pain, acknowledging that it’s a rotten deal, and then moving forward.

These days, I have an even better understanding of the power of personal resiliency. I recently became Vice President of Content for a company called Disaboom, which is creating an online resource of information and community for people with disabilities. The co-founder and man I work with, Dr. Glen House, is a quadriplegic as the result of a skiing accident at age 20. After his injury, he put himself through medical school and is now head of the rehabilitation program for a large Colorado-based hospital, working with others to help them craft an independent life despite disabilities. He is smart, funny, a joy to work with, and totally engaged with life. And he deals with his wheelchair every day.

We’ve talked about how someone with a recent disabling event such as a spinal cord injury resulting in paralysis manages to move forward beyond the anger and grief. I’ve asked him how he did. And his description of his emotional journey basically integrates all of characteristics noted by Flach – you simply refuse to let life derail you. True, it might take you some time to get back on track, and you may need to do some “falling apart” for a bit, but then you choose to move forward. Or to quote Dr. House, to “live forward.”

I believe this is the heart of developing personal and career resiliency: a commitment to always get up yet again, no matter how many times life may knock you down. A commitment to learn anew, no matter how many times things change. If my students can master this skill, then I have no doubt that they will also be able to confidently find their way throughout decades of a changing LIS landscape.

Tags: careers, disability, disaboom, librarians, libraries, LIS, resiliency

Last month, we looked at the benefits of doing freelance writing outside the LIS profession and explored ways to identify possible writing opportunities. Next comes the really challenging question for most of us: how do you find the time to write in the midst of the myriad commitments that vie for your time and attention? Or, as I put it, “how will you fit this into your day-to-day life – you know, the one with a full-time job, friends, family commitments, picking up the drycleaning, getting the oil changed, etc…..?”

Reality: it can be pretty challenging, but it is possible. It just takes a bit of advance planning, and a bit of repurposing.

First, the advance planning. Try to find a consistent time within your weekly schedule that you can dedicate to your writing projects, and set up a standing appointment with yourself. This might be a Sunday afternoon from 2:00 to 5:00, or every Friday over your lunch hour at your favorite restaurant. It could be during your kids’ soccer practices, or the time you spend commuting by bus or train. For some people, getting up an hour earlier a couple of mornings a week carves out needed writing time; others hit Starbucks on the way home from work for a couple of hours of lattes and laptop pounding.

Everyone’s different, so you’ll want to figure out your own best time and space for your writing – the goal is to find what works for you, then make a consistent commitment to it.

Next, decide how to organize your writing process. For example, I organize my writing using several different approaches. First, I usually keep a notebook dedicated to writing projects in my car. If I’m writing a book, this will have the book and chapter outlines, notes about ideas I want to explore, and quotes I pick up along the way. If I’m thinking about an article, I’ll have a blank page with the title of the article, and then leave space where I can map out ideas and organization and questions to explore. Then, whenever I’m in a situation where I can spend some unanticipated time “ideating,” I’m ready to go.

Second, I keep a running hit-list of “interstitials,” or activities I can do in a brief amount of time, say 15 or 30 minutes, between other activities. That way, if I have a few spare moments, I’m never at a loss for what to do to help move a project forward. This might be tracking down a statistic or quote, verifying a bibliographic citation, or doing a bit of online research. I’ve got two goals here: the first is to keep making forward progress on my writing project, even though I may not be able to devote a substantial, uninterrupted amount of time to it for a while, and the second is to not waste precious writing time on “no-brainer” types of activities during dedicated writing time.

The third organizing tool I use is three 3’x4’ bulletin boards. On one bulletin board I put all the organization pieces of my project. If I’m working on a book, I’ll pin up the outline pages so I can see immediately see how the project is organized and where I am at any given time. I’ll also tack up the outline for whatever chapter I’m currently working on. If I’m working on an article, I’ll pin up the outline for the article (or several different articles at a time). I then use the other two bulletin boards to pin up all the pages of the chapter or article draft so I can see visually the organization and balance within the document. Especially helpful for me is that the bulletin boards are portable: I can leave all of my sheets pinned on the boards when I have to stop working and simply put them in an out-of-the-way spot until I’m ready to start working again.

The last organizing tool I use is a “what to do next” list, which is my reminder to myself of what I’ve just completed, what I need to write next, and any questions I was still noodling around when I stopped writing last time. That way I don’t have to waste any time trying to remember exactly where I was when I left off.

Second, the repurposing. One way to do as much writing as possible is to think of writing as content that can be revised, reshaped, and tweaked to fit multiple opportunities. So if you write an article for your state library association’s magazine, for example, is it possible to edit and reshape it for another publication? Alternatively, think of repurposing the research you’ve done for one project – say, perhaps, a guide to resources for online learning – for another audience such as a consumer women’s publication.

Do you have a presentation coming up? Why not also turn it into an article, since you’ve already done almost all the work (researching, shaping, determining key points)? Have you researched and written an especially good blog post? Consider whether it lends itself to becoming an article.

Or think about research you’ve done for your personal life – might you repurpose that into an article? An example of this is a friend who recently went through the process of creating a “road map” for herself and her siblings regarding how to care for their aging parents from afar. She’d done all the research on a topic that’s very important to many of us – and is now turning that into an article for the care-giving section of our website.

Freelance Writing and Your Career

Non-LIS freelance writing offers two important benefits. The first is an opportunity to practice your ability to write in numerous voices, which can be an important skill when it comes to broadening your career options. Being able to write effectively in business settings, whether it’s writing a memo to a CEO, a press release for the community, a marketing brochure, or online content for your website, is always a useful and valuable skill. Practice is good.

Second, freelance writing enables you to create additional income as needed – for example, to supplement an insufficient salary, to create income when you’re taking time off to be a stay-at-home mom, or to provide both work engagement and additional funds after you’ve retired. It’s an infinitely portable and flexible skill, enabling you to work – and earn – as much or as little as you prefer.

Although writing for the LIS professional should always be considered a smart LIS-focused career move, if you’re looking to broaden your experience and find venues that actually pay for writing, writing outside the profession may offer just the opportunities you’re looking for.

Tags: articles, freelance, LIS, publishing, writing

When you’re looking for ways to boost your professional visibility, writing for the profession should be high on your list of action items. This lets you demonstrate your expertise, your interest in key issues within the LIS community, and your ability to organize your ideas and express them effectively – all important to prospective employers.

However, if you can write for the LIS profession, you can also probably write for venues outside of it (and possibly pick up some additional income in the process). Writing for multiple venues also allows you to explore a broader range of personal and professional interests – and writing voices – than might otherwise be possible within the more formal expectations of LIS publications.

Writing and Your Career: A Great Transferable Skill

From a career development standpoint, the ability to write well and for a diverse range of audiences is one of the most effective transferable skills you can possess. If you can write for a business publication, you can probably write well in any business setting. If you can translate your research on a topic into an engaging consumer-focus article, you can most likely write well for the web.

If you can write a good how-to article, you can quickly learn how to write understandable product or process documentation, online tutorials, and instructional design pieces. And, if you can create a fun, upbeat article on a topic that interests you, you may have an aptitude for all types of marketing writing.

Writing for non-LIS publications gives you an opportunity to practice your “diverse range of audiences” skills, while combining your LIS knowledge with other areas of interest. Good at reference and research? Think about writing an article for the local business publication (or chamber of commerce newsletter) about funding resources available to women starting their own businesses. Teach your library’s web-tutorial courses for seniors? How about writing an article for a seniors publication about helping your grandkids find scholarship resources on the web? Are you a cataloger who loves music? Perhaps you could write an article about ways to organize a large personal music collection, evaluating the available software options.

Because LIS professionals know how to find and organize information, they can write on a vast range of topics, for all sorts of audiences. It’s a great way to practice your writing skills, develop and refine multiple writing “voices,” and pick up some extra money, to boot.

What to Consider First

The best way to think about your writing options is first to figure out what you have to offer.

What do you know about, or what interests you enough to learn about? This might be contemporary jazz, quilting, American history, grandparenting, women entrepreneurs, or any of hundreds of other topics. The point here is to identify those things that engage you enough that you’d enjoy writing about them.

Next, how many “voices” can you – or would you like to be able to – write in? After graduate school, most of us have “academic” down cold, but how about writing humorous, how-to, or thought pieces, for kids, for business, or for a specific demographic (e.g., seniors or people with disabilities)? This will help you determine the types of publications you might want to target.

Last, do some brainstorming about what topics you might want to write about within the subject areas you identified. For example, if you’ve decided you’re interested in women entrepreneurs, you might want to consider articles on organizations and online resources for women entrepreneurs, how to land government contracts for women entrepreneurs, or a profile of an interesting women entrepreneur in your city.

Explore Your Options

Once you’ve got some ideas in mind, the next step is to figure out who might be interested in publishing your work. The annual Writer’s Market is a good first start for getting an overall sense of what publications exist in your area of interest, their requirements, and often what they pay. This well-known resource also covers query letters and tips and advice. (The accompanying website provides even more information if you decide to do a lot of writing – www.writersmarket.com; $3.99/month).

Mediabistro (www.mediobistro.com) is another good resource for finding writing gigs and exploring the entire spectrum of writing opportunities. It’s fun to read about the new types of opportunities popping up, and to check out their freelance resources and information-sharing.

But also look around your local scene. Are there publications that accept articles from less-experienced writers, or ones that specifically solicit writing from the community? These can be great places to start your writing activities.

Consider also writing for websites that feature online articles; do a web search on your topic to determine the leading sites. Advertiser-supported websites often purchase articles in exactly the same way as do print publications. Their goal is to bring people to their sites as often as possible, and keep them there as long as possible.

Content is King

Content needs to change often, and is considered key to creating a “sticky” website. So a well-written, engaging, and/or informative 250-500 word article is often just what the editorial director is looking for (speaking from experience here: as the editorial director for an online resource called disaboom.com, I’m always open to article ideas that will resonate with our core audiences). And if you can accompany that article with a good digital photograph? Excellent!

Whether print or online, think about all the different “markets” for written content: traditional commercial/consumer magazines; business publications; associations and non-profits that do member magazines, newsletters, or online content; ad-supported special-interest websites; and e-magazines. And don’t dismiss blogs – I’ve recently learned that people who have high visibility as bloggers in specific market niches are often paid to blog on commercial websites because of the following they bring to the site.

Who Pays What

Generally, ad-supported publications (print or online) are more likely to pay for content, anywhere from 5 cents to 50 cents per word, with an additional small amount for a good-quality digital photo to accompany your article. Some pay on receipt of an approved article, others when the article is published or goes online.

But don’t hesitate to approach other groups – trade associations, non-profits, foundations, cultural institutions, and publishers of government agency newsletters, for example – to determine whether they might pay for articles also.

The more established a writer you are (the more articles you’ve had published), the more likely you’ll be able to bump the per-word rate up a bit. But if you’re just starting out, assume you’ll be at the lower end of the scale.

Starting Your Freelance Writing Life

If you’re convinced that this type of writing might be for you, one of your biggest questions will be how to find time to write. How will you fit this into your day-to-day life – you know, the one with a full-time job, friends, family commitments, picking up the drycleaning, getting the oil changed?

The good news is there are some pretty easy strategies you can use to get started and continue the momentum, and that’s what I’ll cover in the next column!

Tags: alternative, careers, freelance, publishing, writing

With so many different directions to take our LIS skills, frequently the challenge simply lies in narrowing down the options. One way to do just that, however, is to think in terms of “categories” — organizing those multiple options into a manageable set of approaches.

For example, one way to think about your professional possibilities is along the lines of traditional versus nontraditional library work, which might look something like this:

• Doing nontraditional things within a traditional library setting (“traditional,” for purposes of this overview, being public, school, and academic libraries)
• Filling traditional library roles within an organization whose mission is not librarianship or education (usually a special library)
• Carrying out nontraditional tasks within traditional special libraries
• Doing these nontraditional activities embedded in operational units
• Doing library-focused activities outside of — but for — libraries and librarians
• Building on skills honed in a library-based job to bridge those skills into a new, non-library role
• Creating your own job, either within a library or for a non-library organization

However, another take on nontraditional career options can be found in the December 2007 issue of EContent magazine. Each December, the magazine announces its annual recap of leading information companies, “The EContent 100,” organized by category. These categories provide a fascinating look at where information skills may be in greatest demand among industry leaders and innovators in the info business.

EContent categorizes its top 100 within the areas of:

Classification and taxonomy. A familiar arena for LIS professionals, “cat and class” is what allows companies to derive meaningful relational structures for their masses of data. The editors describe this category thus: “When it comes to classifying content, tools range from auto-categorization algorithms to pre-packaged taxonomies, and find themselves woven into many other content categories, from services to search.” (Example: Digg, Inc.)

Collaboration. As many of us are experiencing in our daily work flow, “collaboration tools enable teamwork, web-style, which emphasizes shared knowledge and member-contribution, regardless of proximity.” (Example: Google)

Content commerce. The universe of free-agent content development is exploding. The editors note: “When what is being bought and sold is measured in bits and bytes, solutions that enable the buying and selling of digital content are there to keep the transactions humming smoothly along.” (Example: Copyright Clearance Center)

Content creation, production, and digital publishing. This is the world I and many of my fellow LIS independents have worked in for years, and it continues to grow. “Luckily, tools keep cropping up that help us make it, convert it, use it, and – most importantly – reuse it in ways as varied as the people creating the content in the first place.” (Example: Innodata Isogen, Inc.)

Content delivery. Consider how many channels information flows through today: in print, through the web, e-mail, PDAs… with more to come. LIS professionals can help envision, create, and populate those channels. (Example: Newsgator Technologies)

Content management. Whether for an individual website, a company intranet, or an enterprise-wide knowledge management, content management systems are key to organizing, finding, and displaying information. “Yet, while content management purports to be all things to all people, its true power may actually lie in its flexibility to change shape to fit each new business problem set before it,” suggest the editors. (Example: Open Text Corporation)

Content security. Vital to all organizations, including for-profits, nonprofits, educational institutions, and government agencies, content security for both personal data and digital content is crucial to both internal and external transactions. Digital rights management is included here. (Example: iCopyright)

Fee-based information services. From databases created and offered by independent information pros to the mega-corporation offerings of such companies as Dow Jones, EBSCO, and ProQuest, fee-based services are flourishing. LIS professionals can contribute across multiple plays here: information gathering, architecture, deployment, and more. Additionally, this category can include independent information researchers and brokers (think AIIP). (Example: MarketResearch.com)

Intranets and portals. Describing this category, the editors assert that “Infusing organizations with an internal knowledge and information hub might not be as hot as portals that purport to offer every piece of content on a given subject,” but that “intranets… bear many similarities to their outgoing cousins. So it goes that these unlikely kin share some powerful tools and technologies to suffuse content in and outside the enterprise.” (Example: Intranet DASHBOARD)

Mobile content. Think podcasts, downloadable e-books, stock recaps, web research, mini-movies, and content deliverables yet to go live — this is the future of how content is deployed. (Example: Bango)

Search engines and technologies. Including “algorithms, bots, spiders, metatext, and more,” the category-killer here is, of course, Google, but there’s lots more going on in the search world, and many companies looking to exploit both emerging technologies and niche markets. (Example: Groxis)

Social media. Think community-generated content, the holy grail of today’s Web start-ups. Through blogs, forums, user-submitted videos, wikis, online surveys and polls, and new tools yet to be created, readers have now become “writers, reviewers, and producers.” This category considers the tools being developed, and the companies developing them. (Example: Technorati)

Needless to say, these content development, acquisitions, organization, and deployment categories represent a vast range of possible LIS career opportunities — and not just for those with strong technology skills. In addition to techies, these companies need catalogers, information organizers, technical writers, trainers, and salespeople familiar with how information is used by consumers. They need people with strong people and project management skills in conjunction with strong information skills, and people who understand and can “translate” information-seeking behavior. Sound familiar?

The article provides more than 30 pages of company overviews. Each includes the category, date founded, number of employees, name of the chief officer, and key products. In addition, a number of companies boast two-page profiles that cover history, background, current business environment/goals, and “fun facts.”

To get a better sense of what these companies do and the possible career paths they might offer, take a look at “The EContent 100″ in the December issue of EContent, or check out the listing of the industry 100 online here. Then, start thinking about how your particular skills might be a match for some of these dynamic organizations.

Tags: content companies, econtent, opportunities