{"id":85136,"date":"2014-12-01T11:30:22","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T17:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=85136"},"modified":"2014-12-01T18:12:55","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T00:12:55","slug":"so-what-can-a-librarian-do-outside-the-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=85136","title":{"rendered":"So What CAN a Librarian Do Outside the Library?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Kate Kosturski,\u00a0Senior Editor,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?page_id=57040\" target=\"_blank\">INALJ<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?page_id=57040\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0Ontario<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?page_id=5945\" target=\"_blank\">INALJ Quebec<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">So What CAN a Librarian Do Outside the Library?<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/kate_photo_2014.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-78220 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/kate_photo_2014-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"kate_photo_2014\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Last month, I wrote about all the types of non-traditional library jobs that are out there for the MLS degree holder &#8211; and I do hope you got some good ideas for your own job search. But, I am sure many of you are asking, \u201cwell, all these outside the box jobs are all well and good, but what can a librarian <i>do<\/i> in the non-traditional setting? \u00a0How can I translate that skill set.\u201d \u00a0Through my work, I was able to attend the <a href=\"http:\/\/publishers.org\/committees\/37\/\">Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Professional Development Committee<\/a> Brown Bag Luncheon, <i>Librarians in Publishing Organizations<\/i>, which answers just this question.<\/p>\n<p>Our speakers, McGraw-Hill\u2019s Digital Resources Librarians Kalle Covert and Anthony Marrocolla, and Wolters Kluwer Librarian\/Market Intelligence Manager Michelle Volesko Brewer, are what you would call \u201cfloating librarians.\u201d \u00a0They are extremely autonomous within their organization, but use the fact that they \u201cspeak librarian\u201d to their advantage in several ways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Understanding of the user (librarian, faculty, student) and their needs. \u00a0All three of our speakers make that the heart of their daily work. Michelle calls this the \u201clibrarian as trusted partner\u201d &#8211; the place for the reality check of user, always asking the question, \u201cIs this what the user <i>really<\/i> wants?\u201d while balancing the needs of the company. \u00a0\u00a0(By the way, here is where all those User Experience courses you took in library school come in handy!)<\/li>\n<li>Bridge communication gaps in different departments, while keeping that end user in mind. \u00a0\u00a0For example, sales staff at McGraw-Hill may only have knowledge about the one product they were hired to sell &#8211; but Kalle and Anthony have knowledge of the entire suite of products, and can make connections to benefit all of the sales staff. \u00a0\u00a0Often these take the form of reference interviews &#8211; the same reference interviews that the librarian in the public or academic library conducts daily! \u00a0\u00a0They can ask the questions that keep the user at the heart of the conversation and bring forth real needs and desires.<\/li>\n<li>Bring overall knowledge of the field. \u00a0By keeping up with trends through listservs, conference attendance, and professional involvement, Kalle, Michelle, and Anthony know more about the profession and their users &#8211; market trends, different customer views, the publishing and library industry as a whole. \u00a0My former boss at JSTOR used to call this \u201clibrarianship at 30,00 feel\u201d &#8211; the macro view of the profession, not just the micro view you get from your own library working world. \u00a0\u00a0All this \u201clibrarianship at 30,000 feet\u201d \u00a0translates into effective training for sales staff, marketing messaging that speaks to librarians and their users, and products designed with the user directly in mind.<\/li>\n<li>Use the organizational, analytical nature of the librarian (you know, that one that is the heart of all the librarian stereotype jokes). \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At McGraw-Hill, Kalle and Anthony put this to work in usage statistics analysis. both for their customers, and for their work colleagues. \u00a0\u00a0This includes interpreting usage statistics for customers, identifying which resources need to be more discoverable for customers and fellow employees, and working to develop the best search strategies for customers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Are you noticing a trend with those three bullets? \u00a0One word should be jumping out at you &#8211; <i>USER<\/i>. \u00a0I did this deliberately to remind you that the library is more than a building of books &#8211; it is the user that comes to peruse and absorb those books. \u00a0(Slight tangent for some homework: \u00a0If you want to reflect in further detail on this philosophy, do read R. David Lankes\u2019 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/title\/atlas-of-new-librarianship\/oclc\/641998875&amp;referer=brief_results\"><i>The Atlas of New Librarianship<\/i><\/a> and view his <a href=\"http:\/\/quartz.syr.edu\/blog\/?page_id=6354\">New Librarianship Master Class MOOC<\/a>.) Just because a librarian is not working in a library does not mean that those user-centered skills go to waste &#8211; they just translate into a different set of users &#8211; and in the case of our speakers, both internal users (colleagues within your company), and external users (the customers of the product). \u00a0\u00a0I see this often in my daily work at JSTOR. \u00a0About \u2153 of our outreach staff has the MLS degree, and several of us (myself included) remain active in our professional groups. \u00a0\u00a0We use what we know about our field to enlighten our colleagues who may not always be aware of the latest trends outside of the geographical territory they cover.<\/p>\n<p>I encourage you to think less about the library as place of books &#8211; and more about the library as the place of the user. \u00a0When you remove the physical resource, and insert the heart of the library &#8211; the user &#8211; a whole world of jobs opens to you. \u00a0\u00a0Make that your resolution for 2015 &#8211; to get the heck out of the library!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Kate Kosturski,\u00a0Senior Editor,\u00a0INALJ\u00a0Ontario\u00a0and\u00a0INALJ Quebec So What CAN a Librarian Do Outside the Library? Last month, I wrote about all the types of non-traditional library jobs that are out there for the MLS degree holder &#8211; and I do hope you got some good ideas for your own job search. But, I am sure many&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=85136\">Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":80600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,3603,4123,4139,4557,4510,4511,3843],"class_list":["post-85136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-inalj-ontario","tag-inalj-quebec","tag-kate-kosturski","tag-non-library-jobs","tag-non-traditional-library-jobs","tag-outside-the-box-jobs","tag-outside-the-box"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/kate-kosturski.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-m9a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/80600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}